Staples of Vocabulary
by clandestine7
Summary: [LaviYuu] He is the Bookman's successor, belonging nowhere, heart unmoved, and Kanda is an angry pretty face looking for Someone Else. This is the theory. The reality is that as the end looms near, and Lavi loses sight of who he is and interferes with the players of history, he interferes most of all with Kanda, and wants to be interfered with just as much in return.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** I'm very belatedly cross-posting this here. This is a three-part story, and it attempts to work with the canon through 219, though it does take some liberties for the sake of simplicity and also because I have no idea where Hoshino is going with most of her plot. I hardly know where I'm going with the plot that ended up happening for this fic. Or at least the plot became more than I intended it to be, so now I'm writing a much longer and more detailed fic than I thought I would be. Anyway, I'll put up the second part tomorrow because it was a pain cross-posting from ao3... I wish the LaviYuu fandom was larger /sheds a tear/

* * *

 _Staples of Vocabulary_

* * *

When Lavi first met Kanda, Kanda almost decapitated him. At least, that's what he thought at the time, though it didn't take long to learn that death threats are a staple of Kanda's vocabulary, and that they are a defensive tactic. Spiny, spitting Kanda, always so keen to be alone, making himself as unapproachable as possible.

Lavi had taken to observing him because the death threats had always amounted to nothing. Kanda's coldness is to hide something deeper, just like Lavi's merriment is to do the same. He's pretty sure they reached that unspoken understanding early on. Whatever Kanda's hiding, Lavi does know it's dark. Dark, with a capital D.

But he hasn't killed Lavi yet. And so Lavi has continued to watch him (get prettier and surlier, yet sometimes, in moments that must be mistakes, kinder?) and talk to him (conversations that usually end before they begin, but sometimes Kanda actually complains to him – about Allen, about Komui, about stupid Finders, you name it – and he sounds like a typical venting teenager and it can be pretty endearing), and just spend silences with him (when Lavi can stop pretending to be chipper and just read, and Kanda can stop pretending he wants to murder everyone and just…do whatever he does when he sits around doing nothing).

The things is, they can actually spend time together without bothering each other, and though it doesn't happen often, when it _does_ Lavi feels…kind of like he's settling.

Though bothering Kanda is just so _fun_. Especially, _especially_ , when Kanda takes the bait and bothers him back – petulant little snipes that make Lavi want to press his fingers to Kanda's mouth so that he can _feel_ the humor, so rare from those lips. Lavi infinitely prefers this reaction to the one where Kanda's hand goes to Mugen, though the latter is infinitely more common.

A reunion in Edo hasn't made Kanda any softer; he'd greeted Lavi with yet another death threat. Number fifty? Number one hundred? They are like handshakes between them now, or like something a bit friendlier. Kanda would never do hugs, but Lavi's pretty sure he would grudgingly admit, under certain circumstances, that they are friends.

 _Jokes on you_ , Lavi thinks, but feebly, because even though he isn't supposed to have friends he's certainly put forth extra effort to wheedle his way through Kanda's walls of indifference.

"Ya know," Lavi says now, and this is an admission he usually wouldn't make seriously – and he doesn't quite sound serious now, but the cheer in his voice is thin. "I'm not feelin' too brave right now."

Kanda makes a vague sound beside him. It's night, dark, and the moon glows like some nightmare sickle in the sky. Its light slices across their faces, finding them in the shadows of one of the outer arches of what's left of the crumbled bridge. Edo is a flattened plane of nothingness out ahead; the bridge is quite literally a bridge to nowhere.

Everyone else is gathered beneath the center arch, deep in thoughts of dread and gloom though they are also restless to keep moving. Lenalee lies unconscious again but now that Allen's here, Lavi knows she'll wake up.

"I can think of somethin' that'll make me feel brave, though."

"What?" Kanda says. Humoring him, Lavi can tell. It makes him feel gleefully stupid.

"Don't want ya slicin' me through, though."

Kanda sliced through that jumbo Akuma like it had been made of butter. If that's the level he has to be at for what's ahead, Lavi thinks he's in for an even tougher battle than what he barely got through on the damn ship.

"If it's so stupid, then don't do it," Kanda advises him, but Lavi imagines he's curious.

Lavi curls and uncurls his fingers, scraping them against the stone behind them. "Nah, I think I'm gonna do it this time."

"By any chance," Kanda says, sounding bored, "do I play a part –"

He answers Kanda's question before it's completely asked, turning and pushing their mouths together. To Kanda's credit, he doesn't make a sound – always so cool in the face of everything – though his head thunks back into the stone very audibly. His lips are tight; Lavi grins against them.

"Yep," Lavi says afterwards, the stones bumpy and uncomfortable against his back once more. He can't stop _grinning_.

Kanda makes one of his scornful sounds through his nose. "That really was stupid. Idiotic fucking rabbit."

"But'cha didn't run me through."

Kanda makes another scoffing sound. And then he moves, and his mouth is on Lavi's, and Lavi doesn't jerk back. Maybe it's because of this that Kanda bites his lower lip, and Lavi _is_ surprised at this. It shivers deliciously through him.

Kanda's eyes are very, very bright when he pulls away. "Idiocy's contagious," he says.

"But Yuu," Lavi says, voice perfectly cheerful, "then I woulda caught it from ya years ago!"

"You fucker," Kanda says, with that deep-seated, chilly amusement that comes when they throw insults at each other. And then, suddenly so serious that Lavi's smile falls away: "Don't die."

An order? A threat? A bribe?

All three?

"Can't die with all this bravery I'm feelin'."

Kanda settles back against the wall, saying nothing. A minute later, he leaves Lavi to sit at the edge of their camp, taking over watch from Allen who goes gratefully to Lenalee's side.

* * *

Hardly any time after that he turns his back on Lavi again, though this time it's to face Skinn Boric in a rocky wasteland beneath a rainbow-strewn night sky, and this time there are four others he leaves behind (tells to leave him behind) as well.

 _Don't die_ , Lavi thinks at him, because he can't be so solemn when the others are yelling their heads off at him for being such a self-righteous prick.

And then Kanda turns his Hell's Insects on them, like the ass that he is, to get them out of his hair.

He doesn't die, even though Lavi had been certain he had. But Allen works his magic and Kanda just shows up out of a door in the reformed Ark, late to everything as usual, with Krory unconscious over his shoulders like a misshapen cape. He's the same old spitfire with Allen, same old wet blanket with everyone else, and Lavi is so relieved.

Of course things get worse right when they seem to be getting better.

It's madness, Headquarters infiltrated and so many people dead and dying, a Level Four somewhere inside and Lenalee marching off to Hevlaska to do what she knows best – protect those she cares about at the expense of herself.

Bookman code be damned, he will never forget the anguish he'd felt after she'd defeated the Level Three and woken from the crystal confines of her Innocence – the way she'd asked him if she was still a part of the world as though the mere thought was some sweet, impossible thing she'd already given up on. And so he can't let her go off alone again.

The Level Four is ungodly, looks like a literal fallen angel or some demented cherub with bloodlust screaming from every bit of it, and yet for Komui and Lenalee and the Order itself Lavi throws himself in its path with a flagpole in hand and Kanda by his side. He's not sure if they're pathetic or heroic, trying to fend off the monster with their tinker toys, but there's a split second before it strikes that he feels Kanda's resolve beside him and the thinks, madly, that they might be able to at least do _something_.

He comes to in a pile of rubble, and everything hurts like hell. There's a dull thud as Kanda lands a little bit away. He's vaguely aware of the Akuma floating off for Lenalee – _No, God, no! –_ and of Allen, thank God for Allen, always showing up when they need him most. When his vision is straight he forces himself up, can blurrily make out the green glow on Hevlaska's platform, Lenalee's innocence coming to life. Kanda'a already on his feet, grimacing.

"Jesus, Yuu," Lavi says, sagging against the wall and clutching his arm – pain throbs steadily through it, deeper than anywhere else. "What I wouldn't give for some of your regenerative magic right now."

"Shut it," Kanda says shortly. "Are you ducking out, then?"

"Heh, yeah right."

When they're running for Allen, the stairs ringing metallically under their feet, Lavi gasps out, "Feelin' brave?"

He sees a hint of Kanda's teeth. "Bravery's pointless."

Allen crashes into the platform; the Level Four is seconds away. "Wow Yuu, so deep!" Lavi yells over the whistle of impending impact, and he and Kanda grab for Allen's sword to hold him steady.

He comes to back on the ground floor, back in rubble, and this time he can hardly move at all. Kanda drags him over to the wall, then grabs his chin and forces his head up.

"You're concussed," he says, once Lavi is able to find his frowning face in the swimming quality of everything.

"What a surprise," Lavi says, taking Kanda's hand and removing it from his face, because the grip is tight and he doesn't need anything else to hurt right now. His head lolls back against the wall; he's forgotten to let go of Kanda's hand. "Wow, so many people've died."

A bit of a silence, and then Kanda's hand twitches in his – a stiff, uncomfortable sort of movement. "But we haven't."

Lavi lets his head roll around to grin at him. "All that bravery, Yuu. All that bravery."

* * *

In the aftermath Lenalee's innocence takes up permanent residence around her ankles, like some weird fashion statement. "Blood bangles," Lavi calls them one time, and she laughs appreciatively, still not sure how to handle her Innocence's new form herself. Crystal type, Komui names it, and Lavi must avoid becoming one by all means.

The papers speak of another war – by all outward appearances a 'normal' war, but Lavi knows that 'normal' wars only feed the tragedy and depravity that keep theirs in motion.

Headquarters goes quiet for a while as the fate of the building is discussed. There is suddenly so little to do, and Kanda takes this inaction the worst out of all of them. He must get tired of his own gloomy company, because he looks for quarrels with Allen, gets into more than usual with Lavi, even attempts to rouse something out of Lenalee once, but when Lavi next sees them together Kanda looks something reluctantly close to chastised.

Lavi finds it kind of tragic, that Kanda can be so damn prissy with that pretty face of his. Amping up the cheer in response really does get tiring. Lavi's grins will be wide and honeyed, his eye curved into a clownish crescent, but inside he'll feel like he's screaming, exhausted with himself for putting up with Kanda so much and with Kanda for being such a baby. Usually he can handle it, but sometimes, _sometimes_ , when he gets tired of everything and tired of being a persona, he finds that Kanda's ever-present storm cloud leaves a nasty taste in his mouth.

At dinner this night Kanda complains about the soba, and about Allen's table manners ("Then sit somewhere else, Bakanda." "I was here first. You all joined me."), and when Allen tips over Lenalee's glass of water Kanda complains about idiots and uncoordinated fools and midgets cursed to forever give him headaches.

Lavi's already pressing his napkin into the puddle, trying to help, when Kanda picks up his soba bowl and says, "Don't push it toward me, idiot."

"Gee, Yuu," Lavi says, sweet with a hard edge, "it's almost like ya don't think I'm capable of doin' shit."

Kanda lets out a disparaging little snort. Lavi grits his teeth, drops his napkin down with a wet _splat_.

"Could you stop whining about everything for ten damn seconds?" he snaps, which gets everyone staring at him.

Kanda's surprise is quickly lost in the narrowing of his eyes. "No," he says coldly.

"Then shut the hell up," Lavi says, colder still.

* * *

There's a knock on his door later that night, a brisk one-two that Lavi knows is Kanda. He's incredibly nervous. He'd slipped – he knows, they all know, he doesn't need it pointed out and definitely doesn't want to talk about it.

He doesn't expect Kanda to _want_ to talk about it, though, so Kanda being here is both a mystery and very ominous. He's glad Bookman's out of the room, and wonders if Kanda somehow knew.

Uncomfortable is what Kanda looks like when Lavi opens the door. His shoulders are tensed up. He doesn't meet Lavi's eye. Lavi's tempted to just close the door again and avoid whatever is going to happen.

"I apologize."

Lavi blinks. "Eh? Come again?"

"For being critical all the time. And for being unfairly critical of you," Kanda says, tone very formal. He stares over Lavi's shoulder.

Lavi breaks into a slow, stiff smile. "Yuu, this is so unlike you. Did somethin' happen to warm that chilly heart of yours?"

"Tch."

"Did Lenalee guilt-trip ya inta comin' up here?"

Kanda's brows pull down. _Bingo._ Lavi stuffs his hands into his pockets, fidgety with frustration, hating the way it's making his speech lazier. It's a stupid defense mechanism; everyone can see through it.

He looks at Kanda and Kanda still doesn't look at him, so he looks instead at the hard line of Kanda's mouth, remembering the press of it against his own, and the pull of Kanda's teeth on his lip.

"Fine Yuu. I forgive you."

Kanda's surprised enough to look at him. "Really?" he says. He sounds like he expects a trick.

"Yes really," Lavi says dispassionately, crossing his arms and leaning against the doorframe. "What's the point in being mad? There are better things to waste my energy on, right?"

Kanda dallies, still looking like he expects something more, so Lavi says, "Was that all, or is there a reason you're hanging around?"

Kanda gives him a long, level look. And then he glances at Lavi's mouth. He's so obvious. Lavi knows they're thinking the same thing. Stupidity is contagious and all that.

"No," Kanda says, eyes sliding past. "That's all." He turns away and leaves without bidding Lavi goodnight.

 _Fucking coward,_ Lavi thinks. But he stands by silently, letting things slip past as well.

* * *

Packing gives Kanda (and all of them) something to do, so even though he may not find it to be the most engaging work, at least he gripes a _little_ bit less.

"Plus," Lavi says, packing up a load of books after quickly scanning the spines to make sure he doesn't want to bring any back to his room, "moving involves danger, too."

To repent for all the mayhem that moving the Science Division has caused, Komui's ordered a break from that floor for a few days. Kanda and Lavi are in the library; Lenalee and Bookman are still meowing so they're with Komui and the scientists; Allen said he'd help Jeryy with the cafeteria, his ulterior motives plain as day.

"Hardly," Kanda says. "Nothing happened." He dumps a handful of books into his own box; Lavi refrains from commenting about his lack of due respect for literature.

"You kidding? When he finds me, Bookman's probably gonna slaughter me for laughin' at him so much. Bunny ears _and_ meowing, _and_ a zombie."

"Your sense of humor is disturbing."

"Aw, Yuu, you just don't understand 'cause you don't have one."

Lavi hefts his box securely into his arms. They've made impressive work of the library – about two-thirds of it is empty shelving now, leaving the vast room looking hollowed out and skeletal. The boxes they collect, labelled, in the hallway, which will be moved over when the furniture is.

"You gotta admit," Lavi says, as they carry their boxes out of the astronomy section, "seeing me as a kid was pretty funny, wasn't it?"

"It was horrifying. You looked even more annoying than usual."

" _I_ thought I looked pretty cute. You were cute, too! Little Kanda Yuu, little Kanda Yuu," he sing-songs.

Kanda merely grunts and drops his box with the others.

"You were probably a cute kid, weren't you?" Lavi says, having to walk fast to tail him back inside. "Tryin' to be grumpy with your squishy kid cheeks."

"Shut up, Lavi."

Distantly, Lavi registers the use of his name and knows it's a warning, but this is nothing more than a little blip in his brain that he sweeps aside.

"So you _were_ a grump, even back as a kiddo. Even before Komui?"

Kanda just walks, swift steps through empty shelves, Lavi falling behind.

"Didn't have a friend like me to try to cheer you up? Though that doesn't matter, huh, 'cause you're still grumpy with me."

"Don't," Kanda says, turning a corner.

"Aw, Yuu, don't tell me you really didn't have any friends –"

" _Don't!"_ Kanda says, the words rasping their way out. He spins around. The look he gives Lavi is lethal, but also agonized. "Don't. Say. Another. Word."

Lavi freezes. He knows he's just screwed up unthinkably. Kanda's teeth are bared – he looks like a rabid animal about to strike. He looks like an animal in pain.

"Oh shit. Yuu. Shit." Lavi backs a step away, then another. For the first time since they met, he is actually afraid of what Kanda could do to him. And he's afraid of what he's done to Kanda, who's brought a hand over his face as though trying to block something from his sight.

"I'm sorry. Oh God, Yuu. That was so stupid, I had no right, I had no idea what I was talking about."

He knows Kanda's been here since he was young, and that is all. He knows, just in the way he knows Kanda, that it is not something to ask about, and not something he will be told. And he knows that becoming an Exorcist so young – becoming an Exorcist at all – never means a happy time before.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_. He's seen hints – he's heard of that person, That Person, some kind of haunting force, a plague Kanda's been carrying since who knows when – why didn't he just _think?_

"You're an idiot," Kanda says, words so hard and cold Lavi can feel them in his stomach like knives, like Kanda's sword.

"I know."

Kanda's hand falls back to his side, and his eyes go straight through Lavi. Lavi watches him struggle to reign in the torment, looking at something Lavi knows only he can see.

He sees when Kanda's breathing slows, sees the faraway look in Kanda's eyes turn dull, sees the mask return. Watching all of this, he feels like he's intruded upon something immensely private, and like carrying the guilt of his intrusion will weigh him down forever.

"I'm sorry, Yuu," he croaks. "I'm sorry."

Kanda turns his head away.

Somehow, in a twist of fate Lavi is unable to follow, they end up sitting on the floor, heads bowed, shame swirling. What Kanda's shame is about, Lavi has no clue – Kanda is never repentant about anything – but Lavi knows the feeling of shame well enough by now to recognize it in others.

His own is for making Kanda wear that horrible face. _That_ …that had been real, that had been what's hiding underneath it all, and Lavi thinks he understands why Kanda tries so hard to hide it. How can one person stifle so much torture, though?

The silence has snuck in like a chokehold; the shelves are sentinels crowding around them, tall and toothless. A couple of feet away are Kanda's boots. Lavi can just see them, his eye on his own lap.

"Apology accepted," Kanda says tonelessly.

Lavi peeks, but Kanda hasn't raised his head.

"Liar," he says, hardly making a sound. "You're lying."

Kanda gives a minute shake of his head. Its meaning is lost on Lavi.

"Don't speak of it again. This didn't happen."

"Okay," Lavi says, aware he's being given much more than he deserves.

He wants to reach out and touch Kanda's knee. Another stupid thing, but he really wants to. He's said too much but maybe if he can show his apology it'll make it worth more. But he can't – this didn't happen, after all.

Why the hell does it have to be _Kanda_ that he cares about like this? Is there _any_ point to caring about Kanda like this?

 _Don't interfere with the actors_ , goes the Bookman code, but it's hardly the same when Lavi feels like an actor as well, trying to figure out his next line, wanting so much to be interfered with.

"Let's finish," Kanda says, getting to his feet. He holds out a hand for Lavi, and Lavi has no idea how to react.

"Rabbit," Kanda says, familiar annoyance trickling back in. He twitches his fingers, a beckoning motion.

Lavi takes his hand, gets pulled up. Kanda lets go right away, and Lavi just feels…sad. About the chasm he tore open, for Kanda, for things he doesn't even understand.

* * *

 _I'm just here as the Bookman's successor. I'm on their side by chance. I'm here to record, to document, to archive._

 _I mustn't become a Crystal type. My involvement is simply for the purpose of observing; the outcome of this war doesn't matter. I won't linger here when all is done._

 _My heart is an obstacle. I am an impartial observer, not to confuse myself with the actors._

 _I belong nowhere._

Pointless. Pointless and useless. Useless and pointless. He can repeat them all he wants, but…

Kanda's hair tie swings around; he's jumping and using his sword to slice away the pegs tacking up the diagrams high on the walls. It's one of Komui's past, long-forgotten experiment rooms. Even the ceiling is covered in swathes of paper.

Lavi is being generally unhelpful, sat atop a cabinet and watching Kanda work instead of offering the help his hammer could give, though he knows he'll have to get up eventually for them to finish.

It really is like the day in the library never happened. Which leaves him helplessly confused because the tense, verging on reckless thing between them is still moving, but how can it when he's done something so irrevocable?

Yesterday in the cafeteria their hands had touched when they'd both been reaching for a napkin, and Kanda had glared at Lavi as though Lavi had spat in his soba. And Lavi had tried something – he trod on Kanda's foot beneath the table, and Kanda had kicked him in the shin so hard he'd teared up. After blinking back the tears and valiantly keeping all sounds inside save for a raspy "The curry's spicy today" to Allen's inquisitive look, he'd seen the smirk on Kanda's lips. Kanda had been enjoying himself.

Kanda sheathes his sword and kicks the papers he's gotten down into a pile, and then gives Lavi a very unpleasant look. "Have you decided to be useless today?"

"Yuu, c'mere," Lavi says.

Kanda stops at his knees. "What?" he says impatiently.

"C'mere," Lavi says, and he curses himself silently because his voice betrays him, going soft and almost beseeching.

Kanda's eyebrows flicker up, but a second later he is frowning again. He takes another step, and it forces Lavi's legs apart farther, knees at Kanda's hips. "What?" he says, chin up to meet Lavi's eye.

Lavi reaches behind Kanda's head, watching Kanda's eyes flit to one side. He undoes the tie, his hands remarkably steady, and Kanda's hair tumbles down. He works his hands slowly into it – so soft, and so warm at Kanda's scalp – and waits for the moment Kanda looks at him again. And once this happens, he kisses him.

It's warm and soft and he feels some resistance inside of him melting away, longing being fulfilled.

And then Kanda shoves at him, and his back and head hit the wall, and Kanda's mouth is against his urgently. Lavi lets out a startled sound, but Kanda's hips are against his thighs and Kanda's fingers curl into his shoulders and both are a delicious pressure. He kisses back without restraint; they are messy and noisy and graceless, and Lavi's heart feels so alive.

"Sorry," Kanda says in a rush of breath against Lavi's lips later, a hand behind Lavi's head, cradling it from the rough stone.

Only then does Lavi loosen his grip on Kanda's hair, where his fingers have twined to what must be painfully tight, and Kanda can pull back a little bit.

"S'fine," he says. His head does kind of hurt where it hit the wall, but at the same time it just feels warm where Kanda's hand is. Kanda's lips look like they've been kissing, red and puffy, a sight that almost splits Lavi's brain in two.

Kanda leans back in, and this kiss is slower, and sensual, and it goes on, and on, and on. Lavi knows he shouldn't be doing this, which is exactly why he does it.

* * *

They do very little differently when they aren't kissing.

There's always more packing to do, and in Lavi's case, more reading and recording to do. Kanda slips away from everyone when he hasn't been ordered to fill boxes and lug them around. They can go days without seeing more than a few minutes of each other, with how big Headquarters is and how packing jobs are divvied up.

Even when they are together, oftentimes they won't kiss each other. Kanda still likes not having to interact, and Lavi still likes putting a pause to his own blabbering. Lavi laughs when Kanda and Allen get into their tiffs. He'll even flirt with Lenalee, even when Kanda's around, but neither of them take him seriously and he doesn't take himself seriously either.

It's like only when the monotony of being stuck at Headquarters gets too great will they turn to their new activity, the thrill of it a good way to ward away the stagnancy and leave them refreshed. It's like a reset button, sort of.

Except…except every now and then Kanda will make little pleased sounds in his throat while they kiss, which fills Lavi's insides with something warm and wanting. Kanda is touchy, grabby even, and Lavi feels giddy from the attention, from being so focused on. Kanda's eyes will find his so intently that Lavi has to kiss him again because he doesn't know what he's supposed to say.

Sometimes Kanda will be okay with kissing for a while – when no one else is nearby, in a room or some untraveled hallway – and sometimes he's only okay with it for short moments – a turn in the staircase, someplace grungy like the bathrooms. But whenever he's done, he's done. Compartmentalized back into place, like the rooms they're slowly packing up. _Kissing Kanda_ becomes a nonsense phrase again, instead of what Lavi had just been doing.

His fingertips start to forget the feeling of Kanda's hair, his palms start to forget the hardness of Kanda's jaw, arms forget the feeling of being around Kanda. Even his mouth forgets, and each time it relearns he feels something pop and burn in his chest, something that is like fear and surprise and excitement all at once. He realizes it's the feeling of longing for what you are currently experiencing.

 _Why do we even do this?_ he wonders in the in-betweens. _What the hell do I see in him, and what the hell does he see in me?_

It would make for an interesting study if he wasn't one of the subjects.

* * *

When Cross Marian calls Allen the Fourteenth, Lavi is floored – it honestly feels like the floor's rushed up to smack him in the face. Of all people, of all possibilities, their Allen Walker, Mister always-saves-the-day? Mister revived-his-Innocence-from-basically-nothing? The same Allen Walker whose Innocence literally patched a hole in his heart, a Noah? Clearly someone believes it – they wouldn't have him bound and the room circled by Crows otherwise.

Not only this, but the General also claims there's another side to the war, and when Lavi asks, Bookman dismisses the question outright despite looking pretty concerned himself. And a few hours later Cross Marian is gone, presumably dead of bloody murder, his Innocence left behind, a rat somewhere in their midst.

So in all, it's a pretty big bite to chew on. Plus, Bookman brushing him off like that really gets under his skin. He's supposed to be documenting the war, isn't he? How the hell does being kept in the dark help with that?

Lavi doesn't tell Kanda about any of it, because there are secrets he must keep as his own. He knows Kanda has them too, can see it in the way Kanda looks through everything sometimes.

But everyone knows within days anyway, about Allen at least, and Kanda seems to take the news as a personal offense.

"Seriously, what's up?" Lavi asks, when Kanda comes back from London with not only a new Innocence for Accommodation but a darker storm cloud than ever thundering around him. "You know he didn't ask for this. He's on our side."

"That's not the point," Kanda says, looking pissed off that Lavi is trying to talk to him about this – he'd much rather just be irrationally angry, Lavi knows. But _he_ came to _Lavi's_ room today, and stayed because Bookman's off doing one of the things he doesn't have to tell Lavi about, so Lavi thinks he's entitled to push it.

"Yeah, Yuu? Then tell me, what's the point?"

Kanda gives him a dirty look from his perch on the floor. "The _point_ is he is what he is. The Fourteenth is a Noah, and _they_ aren't on our side."

"Then again," Lavi says tiredly, "whose side are we all on, anyway? You've said it yourself, haven't you? You don't give a shit what happens to the Order, you're just looking for someone."

Kanda's eyes flicker with shock, and then they take on the faraway look Lavi's come to loathe and dread. When it appears, it's like nothing exists for Kanda, like nothing in the world could hold any meaning against whatever he is longing for.

Lavi hides his face behind his book, and he doesn't know when Kanda focuses again or if Kanda tries to get his attention back because he's too stubborn to look.

* * *

And yet, when he exists for Kanda, he exists under such intense focus that he can forgive Kanda the lapses, and forgive himself the self-consciousness Kanda's attention makes him feel.

"Fight with me," Kanda will say these days, when they're at the Order at the same time between missions, and Lavi demands that they go hand-to-hand.

Kanda's a pretty sight when he's fighting him this way – invigorated grins that always carry a streak of meanness, muscles taut and hair whipping around like an embellishment. They don't half-ass anything when they train together like this, yet they fight under an assurance of _I won't really hurt you…too badly._

"Maybe you should've worn your bandana," Kanda says today, steadily backing Lavi up toward one of the beams, fists and feet merciless.

Lavi laughs, parrying Kanda's blows and keeping his eye out for an opening, hair sweaty and limp all across his face. "I could take you with both eyes patched," he says, and he ducks, grabbing Kanda's wrist, and swipes a kick at his ankles.

"Get him, Lavi!" Allen shouts from the sidelines, fists pumping. "Feeling the burn yet, Bakanda?"

"I feel your asinine voice burning my eardrums," Kanda snaps back, having just twisted out of Lavi's grip and jumped away. Allen makes a rude hand gesture, and Kanda glowers at Lavi. "I want to spar now."

"Are you kidding?" Lavi says, flipping his hair out of his eye. It's getting pretty long – even more so now that he doesn't bother with bandanas all the time. "You just don't wanna risk me bloodyin' your nose again."

"Tch," Kanda says, and they lunge for each other.

"You're too reckless," Lavi says later, voice nasally because he's stemming his own bloody nose. He sits on the ground, wall at his back, Kanda above him. The arena's empty; Allen scampered off when Johnny ducked in and mentioned Lenalee had just returned from her latest mission. "You focus too much on powering through to deal blows. It's not bad to dodge."

"I have my style, you have yours," Kanda says. He hands Lavi a clean cloth, and wrinkles his nose when Lavi hands him the bloody one.

"But the point of training is to learn from how others fight to make your own style wiser."

"Wiser? I'm just hitting things. If I hit them harder than they hit me, then I win."

Lavi _tsk_ s, knowing Kanda's just being difficult to be difficult.

"Or you just don't like running away."

"I'm immortal," Kanda says, ducking down. He hooks a finger beneath Lavi's chin, tipping it up. His eyes are full of humor, and Lavi almost holds his breath. "I don't have to."

"Okay, Yuu," Lavi says, pushing Kanda away. "Whatever you say."

"How's your nose?"

"Um, it hurts?" Lavi grins. "Wanna kiss it better?"

"I'll punch you again," Kanda says, but he sits and waits for Lavi to stem the flow, pretending to be annoyed but Lavi knows if he had something else he'd rather be doing, he'd have left already.

* * *

Their first time is awkward, and painful on Lavi's end, though they do talk their way through it. This is what Lavi remembers most about it – the fact that they both try and they both listen, and Kanda is exceptionally patient with him. But it's still lackluster. Their second time is a little better – "Just move your hand," Lavi says, gritting his teeth and making Kanda touch him.

The third time is, like such a beautiful cliché – and maybe there is a reason the saying exists after all – a charm.

Pleasure, Lavi thinks in a haphazard way, is worth the pain, if the pleasure is like this. His legs are open wide and Kanda is against him and inside of him and it's hot and tantalizing, shivers just out of reach like the first time Kanda bit his lip but _more_ and he _needs_ it. He feels limp and coiled tight all at once, Kanda's hair is all over the kiss stains on his front and Kanda's breathing is fast and breaks into near-curses, and Lavi's voice jumps as Kanda moves him – _Yuu – Yuu – ah! Kanda – Kanda – Yuu –_

"Do you _ever_ – shut up?" Kanda groans out. Lavi laughs and comes in the same breath, his ears rushing with a sound like ocean waves.

He falls asleep with Kanda holding him like he thinks a lover would hold someone, and when he wakes up in the morning, Kanda is still asleep. They're strewn across the same pillow and under the same sheets the way lovers would be.

* * *

Lavi's sure Bookman knows, and though he doesn't chastise or forbid anything outright, he expresses his dissatisfaction with a special kind of brittle silence whenever the two of them converse casually in his presence. Lavi feels like he's being tested, and that he's probably failing, but he thinks – recklessly and foolishly, reveling in his naivety – _Oh well._

"It might not be a good idea for you to spend so many nights here," Kanda says.

"Why?" Lavi says, lounging on his side on Kanda's bed, a book open and his cheek propped in his hand. He keeps his eye very determinedly off the bell jar in the corner of the room. "Are people gettin' jealous that I've snagged the super smokin' babe that is Kanda Yuu?"

Kanda rolls his eyes, unfolding himself from his meditation position on the floor. Lavi feels kind of foolish about it, but he feels a special sort of satisfaction in the fact that Kanda can meditate facing him. It makes him feel trusted, but also he can see what Kanda looks like when he's most at ease – he looks truly peaceful, and Lavi feels his own breathing slow just seeing it.

Of course, peacefulness with Kanda never lasts too long.

"Don't say such disgusting things, makes me want to puke."

"What, ya disagree that you're super smokin' hot?" Lavi says.

Kanda scoffs, but his smirk is indulgent. "I don't disagree, but it's still gross hearing you say it."

"Hm? Then what should I call you? Man Candy? Buns of Steel? Super chiseled –"

Kanda stops in front of his bed, puts his hand over Lavi's mouth. "Stop talking."

Lavi licks his palm. Kanda looks long-suffering, but sits down.

"If you keep spending nights here it won't escape the Bookman's notice for long."

Lavi thinks they might be touching on the subject that they aren't supposed to be doing this because of what he's supposed to be becoming. He sits up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.

"Honestly, Yuu? Gramps already knows."

Kanda looks like he's been hit in the face, or like Lavi's dipped the ends of his ponytail into his food. " _What?_ "

"I didn't tell him. But he definitely knows."

"Lavi!"

This is the most flustered he can remember ever seeing Kanda. It's a very humanizing look on him. Lavi tries not to grin.

"Don't worry, he's not gonna say anything. But it's fine, I can leave tonight." He shuts his book and gets to his feet. Kanda blinks at him.

"You're goin' to Paris tomorrow, right? Better get some sleep for your mission." And then, just to make sure Kanda knows he isn't angry (because Kanda can be pretty stupid), Lavi bends down and gives him a kiss.

He means it to be short and simple, but Kanda touches his cheek to keep him there, and somehow he ends up with a hand on the back of Kanda's head. When he pulls away Kanda goes with him a little bit, and when their lips finally separate it takes a few more moments for him to open his eye. Kanda's eyes burn into his, and there is nothing guarded there.

Lavi has the fleeting thought, before he croaks out a goodnight and flees, that this is the most frightening feeling and he's never wanted anything so much.

* * *

Tomorrow he's going to China and Kanda's going to Jordan, part of a mass dispatch that will happen once the last team returns to Headquarters in the early morning.

Tonight he's back in Kanda's bed, and they've been reveling in each other because it's been a while. Something's going on, more Akuma everywhere, the Exorcists are always busy these days.

Kanda had been the one to find him, just minutes after he'd returned to his room, retrieved Innocence delivered and Komui dealt with. Kanda had taken him away with Bookman watching on, and Lavi had been a little bit afraid because there had been so much haunting Kanda's expression. But once they were alone together Kanda had held him and undressed him and been so warm and pliant in Lavi's hands that Lavi had let himself stop worrying, too tired for it.

"I just want –"

And this is an admission that is fully honest, that Lavi's voice goes tight and thin on, that he makes because…because where does Lavi stop and where does he – real him, him beneath it all – begin? This isn't all Lavi anymore, or Lavi has bled into real-him, something's gone too far wrong.

"– I just want some small part of my life to not be owned by my destiny as Bookman. Isn't that hypocritical? I just want one thing to not be about tragedy."

He says it in the exhales between their mouths when Kanda pulls back. Kanda had been the one to kiss him, too, and it had been so tender, so sweet, that Lavi can't do anything but spill his vulnerability into the thin bit of air separating them now.

"I want that part to be you." He looks at Kanda's mouth when he says it, because he's afraid that he's saying it in the first place, but also because he's afraid of what he'll see if he looks Kanda in the eyes. Because he knows, he _knows,_ God he knows that what he'll see will make him want to spill more than vulnerability.

He breathes out a humorless little laugh and touches the tattoo that has long since started sneaking its way down Kanda's arm. "But Yuu, you _are_ tragic. You're a walking fucking tragedy, aren't you?"

He expects…so many things at once. Kanda could do a myriad of things – make him leave, snort out something defensive, detach in a flurry of ice because Lavi knows – even though he's aware he doesn't know the half of it – he's treading on that thing he's not allowed to.

Instead, Kanda puts a hand on his neck and kisses him again, just as tenderly, and Lavi chokes back a sob.

* * *

He doesn't know that he won't see Kanda again for months, and that in the in-between they will suffer so much as to nearly forget each other, and that salvation will come in the form of a Beansprout as poisoned from the inside as either of them, if not more. But since he doesn't know, this night is a night he is happy, in that sad way happiness likes to plague him, longing for what is real and solid at his fingertips that he isn't supposed to have.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Meant to put this up yesterday but completely forgot! My head's been in the clouds. Anyway, this is all that's written so far; chapter three is underway.

* * *

Allen saves him. But he isn't Allen. Not quite. But not completely the Fourteenth either. Lavi is hardly alive, though, so who it is doesn't matter.

How long has it been? What has been done to him? Where is he, how long has he been here, has he been anywhere else? Everything is dark, and faded, and fading – is this a dark corner of his mind that he's escaped to, or is this the last dark bits of life he's been forced to? He hurts in a way that is so all-encompassing he is almost not aware of it at all.

When his head falls against someone's shoulder, and he's hoisted up from wherever he'd been, his body like some other entity completely because he hardly feels a part of it, he knows the other person is Allen. Familiarity is the sensation that lugs painstakingly through is brain, because his eye is not doing much for him.

They leave the Bookman. Lavi feels no regret.

Allen leaves him at the Order and says, before Lavi slips out of consciousness for the third? fourth? fifth? time on their journey, "I'm so sorry."

And Lavi hears an alarm start to sound, and thinks, in the cottony blackness of his brain, _Well, at least it isn't hurting me._

* * *

His first days of wakefulness are hazy at best, but it's remarkable how little he hurts. He's drugged up and dozy and when the head nurse comes around he's distantly aware that he smiles at her a lot and she fusses over him as though he's an invalid. In his state, it doesn't quite cross his mind that he is.

A few days later he's off the heavy drugs, so he's achy and sore but too tired to be grumpy. He alternates between moping at the ceiling and being lulled back to sleep by it. He doesn't think too hard about the Bookman and what he thinks might have been betrayal but can't remember well enough to be sure – his fatigue makes it easy not to think too hard about anything, which he's glad for because not remembering is not something he knows how to cope with.

On day ten (when he was lucid enough, he'd asked the head nurse how many days he'd been out – six unconscious; he'd revived on the seventh; on the ninth he'd asked) he wakes up with an awful crick in his neck, and with Kanda in his line of sight, against the wall with his head bowed and arms crossed as though dozing.

"Yuu!" Lavi says, the exclamation much more croaked and breathless than he'd intended. It still shocks him how feeble his voice is, but Kanda's head jerks up all the same. Kanda looks at him for a long time, as though he's stalled and is incapable of starting up again. Lavi doesn't like the feeling of imminence in the air.

And then Kanda swoops over him, fingers digging into his shoulders, and says, "I'm sorry."

"Wha…what?" Lavi says, startled by the strength of Kanda's grip, disoriented by the strange hollowness to Kanda's voice.

"I'm sorry," Kanda says again. His hair has grown; his bangs no longer have any bluntness to them, instead look much softer. "When I returned I assumed you must be fine. No, it's because I didn't think of you that I later assumed you must be fine. I thought I was through with the Order; it was easiest that way."

Though he doesn't understand, it still hurts to hear he'd been forgotten and done with. Not a lot; he doesn't let it hurt a lot. He doesn't know what he's missed, and cannot draw judgements.

"When I found out," Kanda says, the skin between his brows pinched tight. His grip on Lavi's shoulders is painful. "When I found out, when I got the Beansprout to tell me, I begged him and the damn Fourteenth to bring me to you so I could get you out. It had been _months_ and I didn't know."

"Don't worry, Yuu," Lavi says, trying for a smile. "Allen got me outta there; that's all that counts. I wasn't really in a state to be waitin' for ya most of the time, anyway. I won't hold it against ya."

Kanda holds his gaze for a long, long time. Searching for the anger he thinks he deserves, the disappointment. Lavi's not sure what he finds, but eventually Kanda lowers his head, overlong bangs hiding his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

It is unquestionably remorseful. Lavi tells himself, again, that he doesn't know what he's missed (and what in the world _hasn't_ he missed, probably), and thus cannot draw judgements.

"Yuu…" He lifts a bony hand and places it on the crown of Kanda's head. "Don't be. I'm alive. And you are too. For all I knew, they could have been torturing all you guys as well."

Kanda is very still at that, and Lavi bites his lip. "Hey," he says, giving Kanda's head a little shake. "I know what you can do to make me forgive you. How about you bring me something to eat?"

Kanda brings so much food that Lavi's tempted to point out that he isn't Allen, but he knows – in little snatches of memory that he mostly associates with pain and darkness – that Allen is a sensitive topic. So he sips on some broth, several pillows propping him up enough that he doesn't dribble down himself, and Kanda pulls a chair up beside his bed and eats soba. The choking feeling to the air starts to recede as they reacquaint themselves with each other's silent company.

"Your arm," Kanda says, once Lavi's halfway done with his broth and is slowing down, and Lavi realizes things aren't peaceful after all, he just wants them to be. A glance at Kanda's bowl shows that he's just been stirring his noodles around.

Lavi sits up a bit straighter, and the blanket falls away from what's left of his right arm. It ends at his elbow.

"Oh, yeah," he says. "Darn."

Kanda is stiff in his seat, eyes on his bowl.

"Look at the bright side, Yuu. At least they didn't do good on their promise to give me a second eyepatch to match my first."

If anything, Kanda goes stiffer. Lavi wants to sigh.

The fragments he remembers of his captivity have the quality of nightmares, confused and mostly nonsensical but enough to make his heart seize. There had been Sheril and pain and wanting his heart to give out. During some other span of time Lavi had woken up sometimes covered in dried blood that wasn't his own and somebody sing-songing in his head. _One little Finder, two little Finder,_ he caught once, and he'd snarled and screamed in his bindings before feeling himself forced out of his own head once more.

There had been the time he'd woken up with Sheril's frown right in his face. _Refused to kill her, hm?_ Sheril's finger jabbing into his temple, his head falling to the side. _No no, that makes you useless, not a good idea, Junior Bookman._

He doesn't tell Kanda that when Sheril took the bottom half of his arm – in one fell slice, wholly unexpected and uncharacteristically crude a show for a Noah who can work pain from the inside out – his Innocence forced him conscious long enough to witness it lashing out at the few Noah gathered (Sheril, a glimpse of Tyki, someone hanging back in the shadows, and where was the Bookman?). It was no longer a hammer, but a force of energy strong enough to force even the Noah to retreat before it condensed around the end of his arm and burned so badly he passed out again.

The next time he awoke, Sheril threatened him with blindness, and also with the slow dismantling of the right side of his body – _Wouldn't that be fun, hm? We've already had a good start._

Why hadn't they just destroyed his Innocence? What else happened to fill the gaping chasm in Lavi's mind? It yawns at him, this nothingness, like it's trying to swallow him whole. He feels himself become untethered, his mind begins to fog, it feels like he's being taken over once more but he _knows_ this is just him doing it to himself.

He grips his mug as though he wants to crush it. He is here; a whole part of his consciousness has been stolen but he is _here_ , safe and real and himself. He stares at a crease in the blanket, his eye learning every shadow, every fold, locking on to this piece of reality. He feels sick, but his head begins to clear.

"Your Innocence?" Kanda finally says, voice filtering through the rushing in Lavi's ears.

Lavi swallows down his nausea. "Komui has it. Apparently it's been falling apart since I got back."

"I'm sorry," Kanda says, so quietly that Lavi almost misses it.

Lavi shakes his head. "Please stop."

* * *

Day eleven is better because Lenalee comes in and is so determinedly positive – so happy to see him, to hold his hand, to feed him – that Lavi can somewhat ignore the gloom emanating from the seat behind her.

"Lenalee, maybe you can take the head nurse's position, she's not nearly as nice when she's feedin' me," Lavi says, which isn't true because he has too much pride to ask the head nurse for help, so when he gets to the meat and vegetables at the bottom of his soup he just stabs at them with his fork and hopes the bowl stays steady in his lap.

"Hmm?" Lenalee says, amused. "I'm not sure I'd like to deal with the sponge baths, though." She holds up a spoon, hand beneath it to catch and drips, and Lavi flashes her a grin before chomping down.

"Aw, c'mon," he says through a full mouth. "I might be a bit bony and banged up, but I've still got a pretty hot body."

She gives him the most halfhearted smack in the head, hardly more than a tap. "I'd rather not have to help you use the bathroom, either."

"No better way of bonding!" Lavi jokes, and Lenalee can't help laughing.

* * *

On day twelve Lenalee snaps at Kanda, and Lavi wants to hug her because he hasn't had the heart to do so himself.

"If Lavi can be tough about this, then you hell as better should be too," she says, fists clenched and back ramrod straight, and Kanda looks up at her in surprise.

Lenalee's voice rises and shrills; it's a good thing Lavi is the only patient in this room, and that the nurses leave when he has company.

"He lost an arm, okay. He's skinny and tired, okay. His Innocence is broken, okay! But he's _here_ like the _rest of us_ –" her voice breaks and Lavi knows exactly why, but she plows on "– so you can stop acting like the world is over because it's clearly not because we have him! If you're just going to sit there and mope, there's no reason for you to be here at all!"

And then, since Lavi's bowl is empty, she storms out of the hospital room.

"Hell as better should be," Lavi repeats under his breath, with a bit of a laugh. "She's still not very good at stringing angry words together, is she?" He reaches toward Kanda, but falls a bit short. "Yuu, tip your head this way a bit."

Kanda does, and Lavi gives Kanda's head a gentle shake, messing up his hair. "Yuu, Yuu, Yuu."

Kanda peers at him, so uncertain, that Lavi has to smile.

"Turn that frown upside down, Yuu. Like Lenalee said, the world ain't over yet."

* * *

On day fourteen he says, "So, what did I miss, Yuu? Anything big happen in your life?" because he's ready to know now. All he's gotten from Lenalee is that Kanda was home free for three months, but came back and re-awakened his Innocence and bound himself to the Order all over again. It simultaneously sounds like the most un-Kanda thing ever, and the kind of stupid honorable thing Kanda does all the time.

Lavi's noticed that there is something very different about this Kanda, and that is the base truthfulness in his expressions. There is less pretense, as though it's become easier for him to show what he feels. And now, he is contemplative.

"I found that person."

That Person, Lavi's mind supplies. He smiles.

"At last, huh? That's great. Um… _was_ it a good thing?"

It's almost unsettling, how intently Kanda holds eye contact. Lavi's not sure he realizes he's doing it himself. Finally, Kanda says, "It ended…right."

"Good," Lavi says. And then, not quite certain if he's trying for teasing or not, he says, "Hey, then it makes sense you couldn't come rescue me. You were doing something more important."

He surprises himself with the fact that he feels not a trace of spite, not even any jealousy. He understands, even though he doesn't know what happened, that Kanda did something more important than anything he's done for the Order in those months they were apart. That Person is Kanda's purpose, his everything. Lavi's learned as much.

Kanda looks like Lavi's said something distasteful. He looks not angry, but maybe disappointed. Maybe regretful. Like he wishes Lavi had said something else.

"Yuu…when you say you were ready to be done with the Order…I mean, why'd you come back?

And now Kanda lets out a loud, frustrated breath, and crosses his arms in the huffy way Lavi remembers well. "I owe the damn Beansprout."

 _To think_ , Lavi muses, _that without Allen, we may never have seen each other again._ He cannot begrudge anyone for this. As soldiers in a war there are things that rank above personal affections.

It still hurts, but just a little bit, because he doesn't let it hurt a lot. He cannot say, after all, that he thought about Kanda during those months he recalls little of.

"Also you're a General," Lavi points out a little later. "That's new."

"Whatever," Kanda says, with a twitchy shrug. "It's just to appease Central. It's a worthless title."

And then Lavi asks why he's around, since it really doesn't make sense for General Kanda to be at Headquarters every single day.

Kanda tells him it's because it's what Allen said to do, and by now they know that they can trust Allen just a tad bit farther than they can throw him, which is more than they can trust most people. 'They' being those of them who trusted Allen before they ever saw the signs of the Fourteenth coming to light. Komui is in hot water with Central for freezing missions but Akuma activity has dropped as well, which has given Central just enough reason to wait a bit longer as opposed to sending their few Exorcists out for potential slaughter.

("That's what they'll tell us," Kanda says, sneering. "Who the hell knows what they're using this time to get up to. Shit, they're probably still trying to kill him and don't want us in the way.")

"So what, is Komui at odds with Central?" Lavi asks, pushing himself up to sit against the headboard.

Kanda makes a _psh_ sound. "Hardly." And then, under his breath: "Not like he can afford to be."

What Lavi thinks is if the Earl really could have up and destroyed the Order one hundred years ago, there isn't much they can do other than hope Allen Destroyer of Time keeps his word and gives them whatever small chance of winning he thinks he can procure. Hacking up a few extra Akuma isn't going to do their side much good.

"If he doesn't turn into a psychopath and just start hugging the Earl again," Kanda mutters darkly when Lavi tells him this. His foot taps impatiently against the hospital tiles.

"Split personality or not, he's kinda all we got."

Kanda glares at him.

"Yeah, yeah, we got you too, Yuu. You're real strong and capable. But do you have the freaky half-trust of a handful of Noah? Honestly," – and Lavi says this quietly – "I think the best way to get to the Earl is to get those closest to him to do it. The Fourteenth _is_ the closest…but then Road and Tyki have a creepy thing for Allen, too. It's something. It's more power than any of us have, than all of us combined."

"How do you know that?" Kanda says quickly. "About the Fourteenth and the Earl."

"Oh. Um… I don't know." He truly doesn't, though he has no doubt where he picked it up – even on the brink of death, a Bookman snatches at tendrils of history whenever he can, on the off chance that survival will allow him to record it further.

Kanda _tsk_ s. "He was hardly ever Allen when I was tracking him around. After the Fourteenth awoke, which is my damn fault in the first place, any last vestiges of the Beansprout got dimmer and dimmer. I've seen it with my own eyes. He's hardly less Noah than the rest of them."

"Well, something got through to him, or else I wouldn't be here."

Kanda looks away at this, because he can't argue against it. "I don't like waiting. It feels useless, like a fucking waste of time."

"Did he say how long we'd have to wait?"

"He said 'Trust me, Kanda. You'll only be in my way for this. I'll be counting on you later' and I said 'You better not fucking make me regret doing something as moronic as trusting you'."

Lavi smiles and takes Kanda's hand. "I'm glad you two became friends."

"Tch."

"Nice stigmata," Lavi says, looking at the cross on Kanda's arm. "How holy."

Kanda says nothing, but doesn't pull his hand away.

* * *

And somehow, so simply, as though no time has passed, they pick right back up, he and Kanda and the relationship they'd fumbled into all those months ago.

On day fifteen, he's sick of being stuck in bed, so Kanda procures him a crutch instead of telling him it's best he doesn't push himself.

("Oh, who'd you get this from?" Lavi asks. Kanda shrugs. "Went through some hospital rooms.")

Kanda helps him get to the edge of the bed, his right foot hovering off the floor – though it's almost healed by now, he's supposed to give it a few more days. How he hurt it is another question entirely.

"My right side's pretty fucked up, ain't it," he says musingly, when Kanda positions the crutch at his left.

Kanda grunts.

Instead of taking hold of the crutch, Lavi says, "Hey Yuu, bend over for a second." He reaches as though he's going to grab Kanda's arm to help himself up, but instead he takes Kanda's head and brings it down and kisses him.

Making out with Kanda is as nice as it's always been, nicer still when Kanda slips his thumb beneath the strap of Lavi's eyepatch, making him shiver. Nicer still when Kanda answers Lavi's teasing of "I've still got my kissing, huh?" with an exhale of "Stupid rabbit."

Lavi is losing the last thread of reason as to why this is not something he should allow himself. Even if Kanda might have been capable of setting this neatly aside, he is responding now, and Lavi holds fast to the moment because it is happening while what-ifs are not.

(Has he not suffered enough, to do something for himself? Screw being a Bookman. Screw that he might _be_ the Bookman. Maybe he can be selfish also.)

And then, a bit later, a crutch on one side and his half-arm slung over Kanda's shoulder on the other, Lavi says, "Full steam ahead, to the cafeteria!" and they hobble their way down to eat.

He regrets it a little bit because the trip exhausts him completely, but Kanda grudgingly (and very attentively) helps him eat, and then piggy-backs him back to his hospital room afterwards.

* * *

On day sixteen, Komui comes in with Lenalee and Kanda on his heels and the satchel that holds the fragments of Lavi's hammer in his hand. He says, "Well, looks like our only hope is that it'll let you drink it."

"Come again," Lavi says, as the satchel lands in his lap. He pushes himself into a sitting position, blinking away the sleep their hurried footsteps just tore him from.

"There's nothing we can do without it crumbling more," Komui says. He swivels a chair to face Lavi and sits down. "You said that it protected you when you were with the Noah. I think it's gone beyond the realm of a normal equipment type."

Lavi rubs the heels of his hand against his eye. "You're sayin' I'm a Crystal type?" He can't help it – he yawns.

"If you try to activate it, we'll know," Lenalee says, coming up beside her brother. She looks worried, even apologetic. Kanda supplies why.

"She's going to ask if you really want to give up any freedom you'll have once you've healed in favor of re-binding yourself to the Order and the war, etcetera," he says blandly. Though the way he narrows his eyes implies he takes the question just as seriously as she does.

Lavi looks at the small lump in the satchel. He loosens the knot, and then dumps the sorry chunk of his hammer onto his lap. A bit of the head is all that's left, and it crumbles before his eye, looking like it's given up on itself, and on him.

 _Does_ he want to find out if he can still awaken it? Wars are so pitiful, the act of fighting them pitiful, the causes of them pitiful. The results most pitiful of all. But he cannot truthfully say that he is detached from this war; he cannot actually observe it with the egoism of an objective bystander looking in, like some sort of God. Even God has chosen a side in this war, and made people into weapons.

He puts his hand over his hammer.

He doesn't get any farther than "Ozuchi Kozuchi" before the remaining pieces dissolve into dust, swirl up into the air, and reform as a pitch-black cube hovering a few inches in front of his nose. "Oh shit," he says, turning his hand over. The crystalline Innocence settles into his palm and liquefies. "Double shit."

"Lavi…" Lenalee says quietly.

Lavi's heart races with an exhilaration he hasn't felt in ages. He grins at her. "Gramps would'a hated this," he says. And then he drinks it.

His right arm is on fire from the inside, just as it had been when his Innocence had converged on the wound before. The others hover nervously at his bedside as he tears off the bandages, his teeth gritted, one long, pained sound grinding its way out of his throat.

The stigmata sears itself over his bicep, and then directly on the other side of his arm as well, just above where his elbow had been. Blood flows from the wounds and converges over the end of his arm. There is a flash of green light, a pleasant warmth, and he's left with something of a cap on his stump, an inky green substance that looks metallic but that he knows – a little queasily – is his blood.

"Aw man," he jokes, sweating and a little light-headed, "I was hopin' it'd regrow my arm."

"Activate it," Kanda says. His voice is low but firm, and he stares at Lavi's arm intensely.

"Ya know, I'm still in a hospital bed," Lavi says, but he wipes away the sweat and finds the familiar connection, and says, "Activate."

The seal on his arm glows, and green light shoots out of it, darkening and condensing. Before it can solidify all the way, something much smaller separates and falls onto Lavi's lap. And then he has a right forearm again, a green so deep it's almost black, melding seamlessly with his actual flesh.

"Holy _shit_ ," Lavi says. He flexes his right hand, then holds it in front of his face. He can see the creases of his palm, the finer lines scattering over the entire underside of his hand, even his finger prints. And yet…

"I can't feel it. It feels like _nothing_ is there. But…I can sense it?" He touches his cheek with it, and though he feels his hand on his face (cool, unyielding), he doesn't feel any of the warmth from his face travel into his hand, just a faint impression of his jaw, his cheekbone, and the resiliency of flesh over the top.

He picks up the hammer in his left hand, and it extends the moment he thinks the request. It's nearly weightless itself, but so familiar – feels so _friendly_ in his hold – that he feels a wave of nostalgia. And yet there is a voice at the back of his mind saying, _Damn you, Innocence, for fooling me into loving you when I know of the suffering you wreak._

"Well," he says, looking at the others, "looks like I'm part of the Stigmata Squad."

Komui beams at him. Lenalee and Kanda look stunned.

"I wonder if this thing stays when I de-activate?" he muses, looking at the end of his new arm.

The answer is no, it doesn't stay. The hammer does, shrinking back to its portable size, but the end of his arm loses form in another glow of green, leaving just the seal and the stigmata behind.

"Hey," he says to Kanda once Lenalee and Komui have left. "I'm like Allen in reverse."

Kanda doesn't crack a smile. He's taken over Komui's seat, elbows on his knees and chin on his joint fists.

"Hey, Yuu," Lavi says. "Promise me something." He waits until Kanda looks at him to continue. "Promise me, if you ever face off against Sheril, you'll be careful. He's crazy – they're _all_ crazy – but he's the worst. I don't think he was ever hinged right, as a human."

Kanda gives a sharp puff of laughter through his nose. "There is no 'worst' among them. They're all the same."

" _Yuu_ ," Lavi says, because what Kanda said is true, but still, _still_.

"What do you want me to do, then, if I face him? Not power through to land my blows? Be wise about my fighting strategy?"

Lavi remembers, and he sees the amusement in Kanda's eyes as well. He starts to grin.

"Yeah, something like that."

And then Kanda reaches toward the right side of Lavi's face, but never makes contact. Lavi turns his head to see what Kanda's doing, and finds that Kanda has pinched some of his hair between his fingers.

Head still partially turned, Lavi says, "Um, Yuu?"

Kanda lets go of Lavi's hair, touches a thumb to Lavi's lips. He looks like he's deep in contemplation, like he's trying to work out what strategy to use here and now.

 _Please,_ Lavi thinks, lips parting, _give me a sign that I'm not the only one that still wants this to happen._

"Yuu," he says, and it works, because Kanda kisses him. Slow, careful, and Lavi's head hits the pillows. He pulls Kanda down with him, missing what it felt like to be able to wrap both arms around Kanda's neck but doing well enough with one. He feels Kanda's knee dip the mattress, feels the closeness, feels his heart opening up and demanding more of this, greedily.

When the _click-clack_ of the head nurse's shoes can be heard in the hallway, Kanda draws back. "Hurry and get stronger," he says, face inches from Lavi's, and then he's gone.

* * *

Lavi eats, and once he has the energy, he trains. He gets stronger. He adapts to having one arm; it's not that big of a deal. He's managed fine without depth perception, after all.

The calm is eerie, and everyone feels the tendrils of dread coiling through them, but there truly seems to be nothing they can do but train, and wonder, and wait as well.

Krory takes to hovering around him like a worried hen, coddling him as much as possible. It makes Lavi's throat prickle dangerously, because the closest he's had to a parent is Bookman leading him around the world and letting him pull on his ponytail and teaching him how to fight and observe. He wonders if having parents feels as safe as having Krory. And when he thinks this he's hit with swoops of laughter, because Krory being 'safe' is definitely a questionable way to put it.

Miranda is as self-consciously kind as always, though he'll catch her, every now and then, giving him very nervous looks. He constantly wonders who he refused to kill. A large part of him doesn't want to know.

And then there are Akuma to fight again and strange happenings to investigate, Innocence to collect here and there – though what's the point when the end is so near? Like there's time to find new Accommodators and train them up well enough. Lavi's been back a month and a half when he's put back in action. The scientists and the Finders all say things like _It's amazing how quickly you Innocence users are able to recover_ but he just thinks, _Finally, that took too long._

His control over the elements is stronger, easier. He can almost feel them at his fingertips, like they're a part of himself rather than something he summons into being through his hammer. He is closer to his Innocence than Bookman wanted. He is in control, lets the link run through him, no longer resisting and no longer falling into recklessness because of his resistance. He doesn't run the risk of toppling buildings and crumbling city blocks to the ground anymore.

The catch is that he is more paranoid of people than ever before. He hates crowds, hates noise, hates it when there's too much movement or too much to look at. He grits his teeth and makes it through each time, but then afterwards sometimes he'll shut himself up in his room and feel shaky and weak for an hour or more, and the best he can do for it is lie down and breathe.

He's afraid that even though he's gotten stronger again, he's also gotten weaker.

Sometimes he doesn't deactivate until well after they've left the fray of their most recent battle, even though he knows his right arm attracts looks. It may have saved some people but it's also the reason others died – the villagers can usually tell that his arm is part of the same deal as whatever brought those monsters to their town in the first place.

And then sometimes someone will look at his arm and see something that is not wrong or fearsome or cursed. Sometimes people will thank him, sometimes people will smile, will even ask to shake his right hand. As though they see in it something that is innocent.

In Spain, after he and Krory retrieve the Innocence that had been setting the forest ablaze every night and renewing it every morning, a little girl who is possibly the inn-keeper's daughter says when they check in for the night, "Your arm's so pretty," and for some reason Lavi feels like breaking down.

He keeps it stopped up, just curls up in bed and listens to Krory begin to snore, and hopes that it will be a night he gets to sleep as well.

* * *

His new room at Headquarters is beside Lenalee's.

"Her face is bloated because she cries," Kanda tells him after she leaves them in the cafeteria one day, having wolfed down a meal before being dispatched on her latest mission – Poland, something about a well with water that's been poisoning the crops and the animals but not the people.

Lavi already knows this. The walls are thin and he hears her at night. The first few times he did nothing, but now when he hears her he goes next door and knocks, and is ushered inside. It's the least he can do: hold her and give her someone to hold onto. She's watched her family grow and shrink repeatedly for so long; Lavi hopes holding on to someone can give her some sense of solace. Maybe if she holds on tight enough, she can tell herself that he won't leave too. He's still not sure about it himself.

She hates all the crying she does, though. "I'm sorry I can't pull myself together," she says to him once she's back from Poland, and in the ruddy light her eyes are puffy and her hair is tangled and sticks to her tear tracks.

Lavi just hugs her again, at a loss for how else he can help. "There's nothing wrong with crying," he says into her hair, working very hard to keep his voice steady. It tears at him to see her so sad. "It's amazing that your heart is still so big."

* * *

In return, she comes to him when he wakes, screaming, from a nightmare. And when he doesn't wake screaming but because he'd been holding his breath, he tiptoes to her door, clammy with sweat and sometimes still shaking from the force of the gasps he'd stifled. It only takes one knock, and she answers. He doesn't go to Kanda because he doesn't want to torture him with anything more.

And with Lenalee it's easier to just talk about nothing, or daydreams disguised as nothing, whittling the night away with the kinds of conversations that flow when the brain is most tired. Sometimes she's on a mission so he faces the night alone, but when she's home he goes over without a second thought.

"If you could take everyone and bring us all on vacation," Lavi says tonight, sitting on the floor with his head leaning back against the mattress, "where would you bring us?"

Lenalee makes a humming noise beside him. She's wrapped up in blankets, and the lamp beside her bed glows dully. "Somewhere really warm," she says, and then she laughs. "Like the sun."

"The sun? That's the shittiest vacation I've ever heard of." Lavi laughs too though, and then it's the both of them laughing under their breath so as not to wake the hallway.

"I'd like a vacation," Lenalee says, smiling wistfully. "A permanent one. And the Akuma can take one too. They can go back to Hell or wherever they came from, and their souls can come with us, and the Noah can just disappear, and me and you and my brother and everyone else could just go on vacation forever."

"That's…very dark and very light at the same time."

Lenalee's still smiling, but it fades slowly away as she stares across the room. "Kanda wants to go."

Lavi looks away from her, tries to keep his tone light. His heart feels heavy, though. "He shoulda thought of that before he became a General. Now Central's got him doing important Generaly things, so sucks for him."

The light flickers, and Lavi waits for it to die, but it catches itself and shines on with tired determination.

Lenalee says, "I don't think he wants to go on vacation alone, though. I think he'd get lonely."

* * *

Klaud Nine, Krory, and Marie take down Lulu Bell, and then Marie spends a week in the infirmary and Krory a week and a half.

General Sokaro kills Chaoij. The report, relayed by Komui when Lavi, Lenalee, and Tiedoll return from a failed retrieval mission in Switzerland, is that he'd gone haywire and attacked his unit, as though something had infected his brain. It was kill him or risk letting him Fall.

So then Chaoji really turned on them, or Sokaro would have Fallen as well. How could he have taken such a risk, though, and how did his Innocence determine that his actions weren't an act of betrayal, cutting down another Innocence-bearer like that? It's frightening, how sentient their weapons are. Though really it's the other way around: they are the weapons and their Innocence keep them in check.

The war has never been a simple matter of _good_ versus _evil_ , not when their side is teeming with the corruption of Central, not when Allen is simultaneously a Noah. But the question of what it is a matter of still hangs in the air.

Lenalee and Komui are fighting for each other, and the extended family they've built up around them, for the goal of providing a world worth living in for those they want to protect. Kanda fought for his own freedom, and now? For his own guilt, for turning Allen into the Fourteenth? There is bound to be more (like Lenalee and Lavi and, yes, Komui, and the idiot Finders, for a Beansprout he might believe is still there).

And Allen…Allen fought (fights?) for humans and Akuma alike. For souls, for peace, for everyone.

It's all for people. Everyone fights for people. Even Chaoji, probably, but just that and the Innocence on his arms were not enough to keep him in God's favor.

And Lavi? Yes, there are people he fights for, but he wonders to what extent. How much will he allow his Innocence to make him do, or prevent him from doing? And does he really have a choice, now that he's sold himself to it a second time?

* * *

Things are less convenient without Allen's Ark, or at least without new entrances popping up for them. After a mission in Bulgaria with Kanda, their Finder must arrange their return to Headquarters, which means there is time to be sucked into the festivities the townspeople throw.

At the pub where Lavi and Kanda are corralled to eat, a drinking song breaks out at the largest table that spans the entire center of the dining room. Merriment is all around, despite the corner of town that burned to the ground. Men sing from deep in their lungs, noses pink, tankards sloshing. Women hike up their long skirts and dance between tables.

At first Lavi thinks it foolish, that they celebrate when many of their own have died, but then he looks at it differently. They are celebrating because they are alive and still have a home. They still have a town, and themselves. Their joy is pure; they celebrate their own continued existence.

They hail Lavi as some kind of hero for calling up the rain that doused the flames. On the street, a little old nun had bustled up and blessed his arm – darkly ironic, but he'd been touched all the same. Here in the pub, they are treated to a free meal, and accommodations have been arranged at the inn next door, also free of charge. Women who are not dancing, and some who are, glance at him not-so-secretively, enamored and intrigued. Everyone is grateful. The bar master keeps bringing more plates of food to their table, until it is too risky to pick up a glass to have a drink.

It all leaves Lavi sweating, nerves taut, too much in his ears. He finds relief in the sullen expression on Kanda's face. They are at a small table crowded into a corner, because Kanda had refused to be seated amongst anyone in the throes of festivity.

"Too much for ya, Yuu?" Lavi reaches a leg out beneath the table, hooks the toe of his boot around the ankle of Kanda's. It helps ground him.

"This is the most obnoxious thing I've ever witnessed."

"Jealous I stole the show?"

"Che."

Lavi laughs, pulls Kanda's foot toward him. "Should we leave?"

He thinks it's probably quite rude, getting up and sidling their way out, and wonders if anyone can see the crackling energy between them, his fingers bumping into Kanda's wrist under the pretense of not letting the crowd separate them.

In their room at the inn, Kanda kisses him against the door without preamble. Lavi finally deactivates his Innocence, wraps his arm around Kanda, and kisses back. He can still hear the sounds of celebration, faintly, through the closed window, but this is much more enjoyable.

And then Kanda pushes closer, thigh between Lavi's legs, and Lavi grins.

"Wanna have sex, Yuu? Though we should probably clean off first."

They smell of smoke, and Lavi can feel grit all over his skin, dried into the sweat and the bruises. Kanda hasn't done anything beyond kissing him since he's recovered – whether it's because Kanda's been worried he's too fragile or because of his arm he isn't sure, but it's probably some of both.

But now Kanda's fingers open his jacket and steal beneath his shirt as though they'd simply been awaiting the invitation.

"We don't have what we need," Kanda says, mouth moving down Lavi's neck, palms a searing heat on Lavi's stomach.

"Yeah," Lavi says, head tipping back, voice losing solidity. "Bummer."

Later, he lays flat on the mattress, hair creating a water stain on the pillow while Kanda presses kisses slowly down his front. He holds on to Kanda's shoulder, fingers tightening every time Kanda's lips touch his skin. Kanda's wet hair is tied into a very tangled knot on top of his head, and it's one of the hottest things Lavi's ever seen.

"Hey Yuu," he says, eye on the ceiling. "Ya still want me even though I don't have enough arms?"

Kanda kisses right above his navel; Lavi's hips rock languidly.

"I don't give a fuck how many arms you have. You could have three and you'd still be you."

"Well, I dunno if that'd be me. If you ever see a me with three arms, don't get too close."

And then he can't see the ceiling with its old wooden beams and cobwebs, because Kanda's face blocks the way. A frown, and eyes that want him very much.

"Are you an idiot?"

Lavi gives a nervous, intoxicated laugh. "Maybe."

Kanda's hand goes between his legs, and Lavi sighs.

* * *

Later still, it's Kanda's voice that wakes him. "Lavi. _Lavi._ "

Lavi comes to covered in sweat, Kanda's hand on his shoulder. It's sometime in the middle of the night.

"Shit, sorry," Lavi manages, and then he's breathing fast, curling up on himself. His dream disappears in a blur to the back of his mind – eyeballs, knives, fingers playing with his intestines, his hammer crumbling, the beginning of a Fall.

Kanda pulls him up and over, so that Lavi's face is against his neck and their legs interlace. "It's okay," he says into the top of Lavi's head, running fingers through Lavi's hair, damp on his nape but not from the shower anymore. "Lavi, it's okay, breathe."

Slowly, slowly, hand clenched into Kanda's shirt, Lavi slows his breaths. His clothing clings to him, feels cold; his forehead is slick against Kanda's skin. He feels disgusting, feels like he's making Kanda disgusting, but Kanda doesn't let go and doesn't remove his lips from the crown of Lavi's head. And after a little more time Lavi doesn't care about the sweat and the uncomfortable hot-cold.

"Sorry, Yuu," he says, exhaustion hitting him hard and fast.

"For what?" Kanda says. His fingers still move through Lavi's hair, and Lavi is too tired and too heavy to answer.

* * *

Kanda, Lavi, and Lenalee become something of a fixed team on missions. Lavi doesn't quite realize what this means, though, until he barges into Kanda's room one afternoon looking for a book he's sure he left there, only to be frozen in the doorway by twin glares. Kanda and Lenalee sit side by side on the floor.

"Excuse you," Kanda says slowly. "We were meditating."

Lenalee's glare is already gone, but she lets out a huffy breath. "I was feeling so _peaceful_."

They are due to be dispatched tomorrow morning, right after Sokaro's team is due to return. Headquarters has a system now of always having one team around, just in case another invasion happens.

"Well, isn't this cozy?" Lavi says, leaning against the door frame.

"You should meditate with us, Lavi," Lenalee says, back to her usual chipper self.

Kanda _tsk_ s.

"I think it'd be a great team-building exercise," Lenalee says, frowning at him.

"We're already a good team. We don't have to build anything."

"Aw, Yuu, you don't want me around?"

Kanda looks stubbornly to the side, and Lavi chuckles.

"That's fine, I'm too fidgety for mediation anyway. Ah, but there's my book!" Lavi stomps, purposely loud and obnoxious, over to the table, and then stomps just as obnoxiously back to the door. Kanda smacks him in the leg as he passes.

Later, at lunch, when it's just him and Lenalee at the table, Lenalee puts her hand on his and says, "Are you in love, Lavi?" Her smile is sweet, just a hint of teasing, and very knowing. Very happy for him, too, which means she's already decided on her answer.

The question still hits Lavi in waves. In love. _In love._ Really, truthfully, he already knew, but he'd never thought the actual words.

How ironic, a Bookman in love.

And then, when she's gone and he's finishing off his lunch, he thinks to himself that yes, he's in love with Kanda, but he's also in love with having a family, and a home, and a reason for the heart in his chest.

* * *

"Do you wear emotions like you wear clothes?" Kanda asks him that night, under Lavi's covers, a hand on Lavi's waist. The moonlight slices like moonlight always slices, a harsh, jagged way across his face – his mouth, a cheekbone, part of an eye in the light.

"What, fight in them and get them all sweaty and bloody and then chuck them in the laundry? How poetic," Lavi jokes, but it's halfhearted. Kanda's fingers tighten against his skin, belying his frustration for just a second.

"Are you…this…Lavi," Kanda finishes, a little pleadingly, and Lavi has to smile because words will never be Kanda's friend.

"Is this honest, you mean. Am I being honest with you."

"Yes."

"I am being honest with you."

Kanda ducks his head a little, and it brings all of his face into the slant of light. His eyes are lowered, flitting side to side; he's thinking. His hair is loose around his shoulders, over his back, down his chest. Lavi wants to feel it more, wants to tuck it behind Kanda's ears and watch the way this will make Kanda's cheeks darken.

Kanda picks his words with difficulty, but his eyes are back on Lavi, and they demand the truth. "Then, when Lavi is done, when you move on to the next one, will this –" he tightens his fingers again "– will this still be?"

"Yuu. Am I being Lavi right now?"

"No," Kanda says without hesitation. "And yes. Your speech changes and your personality changes, but…it's still you."

Lavi smiles, comforted and reassured. Lavi has been the realest, the most human, and maybe that's because Lavi _is_ human, and as such is part of his humanity. He thinks Kanda has answered something else for him, also – there will probably not be a next one, no number fifty.

"Answer the question," Kanda says, and Lavi blinks open his eye. He'd snuggled into the pillow, satisfied with himself, and had forgotten that he'd countered Kanda's question with one of his own.

He tugs on a bit of Kanda's hair, and gets an impatient frown in return. He wants to trace Kanda's lips with his fingers, then his cheekbones, then the whole of his face. Kanda really is gorgeous, and there's something struggling to be just as beautiful inside of him. A heart that is larger and softer than he'll ever let most people know.

"Well, it takes two to answer a question like that, but on my end, yes."

Kanda flops down, ankles butting with Lavi's, hand going to Lavi's hip. He tucks Lavi's head beneath his chin and says, "Good."


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** This story keeps getting longer than I intend it to... Or more like, I have the framework but when I go to fill in the spaces I just watch the page count go up and up. Anyway, the next part will seriously be the last. And this is the chapter where I say sayonara to canon and make all my own rules :) Let me have this, I know canon will take so much I love from me, i just wanna do things my way. (I'm leaving Johnny out of this whole thing so he can be safe and happy.)

* * *

He watches Kanda and Lenalee with hawk-like focus, and somehow they always manage to scrape through each battle with fewer injuries than they should have. He notices, though, that Kanda's linger longer than they used to – and if this is only cuts and bruises and sprains then what toll will a serious injury take? He constantly dreads an ambush like the one that takes Klaud Nine from them.

 _What a pointless give and take,_ Lavi thinks, when they are informed of this loss. They kill some enemies, some enemies kill them. Always, they are the ones outnumbered, so each loss of theirs is felt like a crushing blow, a step closer to forfeit _._

There is really no probable way they will win this hellish war. But they cannot just let the Earl win either, because the destruction of humanity is definitely not an okay end to things. But what other option can there be?

This is what Lavi thinks, quite detached – Bookman would be proud of this – while Komui tells them that Klaud Nine has been murdered and her Innocence without question destroyed. Except when Komui dismisses them, he says to Lavi, "Lavi, I need more detail on the absorption ability of the Akuma you fought in Rome," and hands him a folder he recognizes as the one he turned in last week, the corner creased in the exact same spot.

"Thanks, boss," Lavi says sarcastically, and he tucks it beneath his arm.

He doesn't open it until he's back in his room. The piece of paper is nestled between two pages, and looks merely like a note Komui scrawled down about all the various foods he wanted for lunch one day, but Lavi picks apart the code in minutes. He waits until the hour Komui has instructed him to come, and then he goes back to Komui's office, folder under his arm once again.

"So, she was looking for Cross?"

"Yes," Komui says, a flash in his glasses, catching the lamplight.

"So Cross is alive?"

"I can't confirm that."

"But Central doesn't want that."

"No."

"Well, that's not a surprise."

Komui chuckles. Lavi uncrosses his legs, leans back in his chair.

"Why do you trust me? You know what the old Panda was about. Sticking around only as long as it's relevant to our interests."

Komui gives him a wan smile, something that ages him and washes him out. "I have a select few to choose from. I believe you're among them, as do you."

How tricky, thinks Lavi. "Did Gramps ever mention a third side to you?"

"He mentioned more than he should have, as a Bookman." Komui smiles again. "In a roundabout, intentionally misleading way, of course."

Lavi resists the urge to _tsk_. Trust the old man to go riddle off things to Komui as well. Lavi hates that when he thinks of the Bookman, he still thinks about being little and pulling that stupid tuft of hair. Nostalgia is a pain in the ass.

"This third side," he says. "Cross believes in it. Hey, is he with Allen?"

Komui steeples his fingers, brings them to the bridge of his nose. "There's been no word from him since his disappearance, but I can only guess."

"So what?" Lavi says. "You can't go against Central." He feels like they're talking circles around what they're aiming at, trusting each other yet afraid to trust, or maybe just afraid of what they're discussing.

"No," Komui says. "But I will protect you all in every way I can, and sometimes 'Be careful' is the only way."

* * *

He sits on Kanda's bed while he waits for Kanda to return from dinner, while he wonders if Komui has passed the same information around to the others yet. Surely Lenalee knows, but who else would he tell? All of them, all the European branch exorcists are loyal to him and each other bounds more than to Central.

The door opens. Kanda notices him, pauses for a moment, then continues inside, shutting the door gently. "I want to tell you something," he says.

Lavi sits up straight. "Is it about what Komui told us earlier?"

"What? No."

"Oh. What is it?" Lavi says, but he's distracted again. He hardly pays attention to Kanda sitting down beside him.

What the hell is Central thinking, with such a steep sacrifice? _If_ Komui's hunch is true…they must have taken her Innocence back. They wouldn't destroy it. So what, do they think they can use it still? There are horrendous possibilities in that.

Kanda touches his elbow, and Lavi looks over.

"I want to tell you something."

 _Oh,_ Lavi thinks, seeing the patience in those eyes, and the insistence. _This is something serious._

"You can record it as history, but that's not why I want to tell you," Kanda says.

 _Why?_ Lavi thinks. _Why does this sound like a 'just in case'?_ He's afraid to ask how mortal Kanda has become – he'd be lying if he said he didn't count on Kanda's regenerative magic to keep him safe just as much as he counts on Kanda's own abilities in battle. Kanda hasn't become all that much less reckless.

"You gonna unload something heavy on me, Yuu?"

Kanda doesn't answer that question, he simply starts talking. Detached, factual, and yet when he's finished, Lavi can only sit.

"Why are you crying?" Kanda says, a concerned furrow to his brow, and then Lavi feels the tears spill over. He blinks, and his eyesight goes blurry.

"Jesus, Yuu," he says hoarsely. "How… _how_? How did you get through that?"

"Because there was nothing else to do," Kanda says. He touches Lavi's cheek, thumbs away the tears. "I didn't want to make you sad."

Lavi takes Kanda's hand, presses his face into it.

"All of that… It hurts, to think of you going through all of that. I want to make it so you never had to."

It takes a long time for Kanda to respond, and when he does he says, "But you can't. It's history."

Lavi gives a congested laugh. "How poignant."

What he wants, more than anything, is for the world to never make Kanda suffer again – and, for that matter, never make Lenalee suffer, never make soft-hearted Krory or self-conscious Miranda, or Timothy who is too young or Komui who must feel too old – to never make anyone suffer the way this war continues to.

He spent so long learning that humanity is deprived and foolish and cruel, but really, it's just individual people trying to survive in the lot they've been thrown into. This is what years of observation have revealed to him, and how mundane a truth to be gained from an aim as pompous as _record the true history of the world_. The true history is just that people love, and try to protect, and lose, and mourn.

If survival wasn't the aim, if it was just living, no good and evil of Biblical proportions to serve as a backdrop, then humanity probably wouldn't seem so desperate. If you didn't have to worry about a loved one's departed soul being mechanized and made to kill, if you didn't have to worry about the humans sacrificed to build up God's army, if if if.

With no Akuma, but also with no Innocence, he thinks it'd be a lot easier to see all that is humane in humanity.

He's done a good job of finding it in Kanda already. To think, he once wondered what the point was in loving Kanda this way. The point is…Kanda's helped him find his humanity too. They all have, but Kanda – spiny, spitting Kanda – makes him feel that maybe, even as fragmented a person as he is, he can be someone's most important person. He can be That Person, maybe, or maybe just a shallow imitation, but even that is more than he thought he could ever be.

He holds Kanda's hand in his lap, fingers twined with Kanda's so tightly and yet Kanda doesn't complain. "Want to hear about how I met Bookman? Actually, first, want to know my real name?"

"Only if you want to tell me."

He whispers it in Kanda's ear, and then pulls back to read Kanda's reaction, which isn't much of anything. Kanda just tips his head slightly.

"Sounds sort of like Lavi."

Lavi laughs, and it rings clearer this time. "Doesn't it?" He licks his lips, and says, "Well, about my eye."

At the end of it, he holds onto Kanda and Kanda holds onto him. He has his face in Kanda's neck, can feel Kanda's pulse against his nose.

"Yuu, whose side are you on?"

"Nobody's."

"Heh, that can't be true. You're still fighting."

He hears Kanda sigh. "I don't know."

"Shit, it's hardly good if our side wins, right? Chaotic good tips too easily into pure chaos. It already has."

"So?" Kanda says.

"So I probably shouldn't say anything too treasonous."

"What you say doesn't matter. It only counts when you do it."

Lavi pitches his weight over, forcing Kanda to sprawl onto the bed. "You're the most difficult fucking person I've ever met, Yuu," he says fondly. He yawns, settles his head onto Kanda's chest, wiggles around until he's comfortable. "What I'm gonna do now is sleep, 'kay?"

Two arms work around him, hold him tighter than they need to, and he feels so, so warm.

* * *

Their ambush comes in a forest in Romania. Lavi's just clobbered the last Level Three and Lenalee and Kanda have finished off the Level Four, when another troop of Akuma floats over the edge of the cliff they retrieved the Innocence from.

"Where the hell do they keep coming from?" Lavi yells, yanking his hammer from the smoldering remains at his feet.

There have been too many close calls this fight – he's felt the heat of bullets miss by impossibly close margins more times than he is comfortable with, and has seen Lenalee come too close to getting hit too many times as well. Kanda has been wise about dodging so far, but the longer the fight drags on, the deeper the dread sinks into Lavi's gut. He sees the way Lenalee favors one leg, sees Kanda press a hand into his ribs when he has the moment to. There is a crunch in Lavi's left shoulder every time he swings his hammer around, so he's taken to wielding it single-handedly.

"Lavi, take the Innocence back!" Lenalee calls to him, while ahead of her Kanda has already engaged their new opponents – two Level Threes, with a Level Four behind them.

"There's no point in me leaving!" Lavi shouts back.

Their Finder, Ernesto, is dead, though Lenalee hadn't seen and Lavi hasn't found the time to tell her. The Innocence is in the pocket above Lavi's knee, but saving it over his teammates would be as pointless to him as saving a hunk of junk.

"Lavi!" Lenalee says, shooting a pleading look over her shoulder. Her knees are bent, ready to spring her into the fray, but when she sees him her eyes go wide and she turns herself around. "Watch out!" she yells, and in a fraction of a second she has rocketed past him. There is a _thud_ of collision, strangely muffled, and a blast of air from the force of it.

And then Lavi has had the time to turn around, and he sees that Sheril has caught Lenalee's boot in one hand. Tyki stands by his side, arms crossed like he's come to judge.

"Long time no see," Sheril says, with a sickly smile that is directed right at Lavi. He throws Lenalee off like she's made of feathers, and she flips and lands beside Lavi.

Kanda appears at her other side. "The Akuma are standing off," he says, and Lavi doesn't have to check his face to know there is a look akin to murder there.

"Sorry for dropping in so suddenly," Tyki says. His voice sounds like he's holding back a yawn. "We were just a tad upset we weren't invited."

Lavi waits for the feeling of bones crushing; for all he knows, they're already caught in Sheril's threads. If he tries to move he will be able to tell, but he is afraid that any one move will be the wrong one.

Kanda and Lenalee must get away. They are all tired and injured, but Kanda and Lenalee will get away. He can allow no other end.

"I want the Junior Bookman," Sheril says, his smile falling away entirely. "I've missed him."

Kanda and Lenalee shift, and Tyki sputters out a laugh. "They're so protective! Must still feel bad about leaving their friend with us for so long."

"Lavi –" Kanda says under his breath, but Tyki speaks over him.

"Sorry, no time for strategy meetings today."

Lavi whips up a ring of flames around them, hot enough to keep the Noah out, but he knows not for long. "The Akuma were just wearing us down for this," he says quickly. "If we keep fighting, that's exactly what they want."

"We can't run," Kanda says. Blood trickles down between his brows. He has Mugen raised, and he looks at Lavi in warning. "Get rid of your damn fire or I'll walk through it."

"Yuu!"

"I'll kill them both."

"God _dammit_ Yuu –"

"I _said_ , no time for strategy meetings," comes Tyki's velvet voice, and Lavi feels an arm hook around his waist.

Lenalee reacts first, blasting Tyki back through the flames. And the fight begins.

It is dizzying, attacks and parries all so quick that Lavi can only keep up by turning part of his consciousness off, the part that insists on analyzing everything in the moment it happens. Even for him there is too little time for that, so he puts the habit on hold and moves in time with the Innocence in his blood.

Lenalee shrieks and contorts one second, and Lavi smashes his hammer into Sheril the next, freeing her. Tyki brings down his hand to slice, and Kanda twists out of the way in the nick of time, leaving a gash in his sleeve but not his skin. Lavi feels his body seize up, and Lenalee, who has learned that she is the most capable of avoiding Sheril's threads because she can flit about quicker than the eye can see, locks her knees around Sheril's neck and flips him head first into the ground.

The Noah's attacks are too straightforward. Something doesn't sit right. In fact, Tyki hasn't strayed from hand-to-hand combat, and Kanda takes him on at close quarters with his sword.

Lenalee and Lavi work on Sheril, who grows visibly frustrated by Lenalee's speed. He compensates by playing with Lavi, tripping up a leg here, catching an arm there. It feels to Lavi like he's struggling through spider webs, though they simply fall away after they throw him off course.

Sheril's main focus is Lenalee, and only once he finally snatches her blurry form out of the air and tosses her into a tree so hard she crumples, the Dark matter sent along with her shattering like glass, does he face Lavi square on.

"Nice arm, Junior," he says, and Lavi's entire body goes rigid.

The fingers of his right hand are forced open and his hammer shrinks and falls, useless, into the grass. And then he feels the threads go right through his arm, sharp and taught as wires right where his Innocence fuses with his flesh. He sees it happening, the slice, his arm falling away a second time. He feels every last bit of Innocence in his blood revolt, feels like what is left inside of him is trying to bubble to the surface and out of his skin, like he is going to sick it right out.

And then he hears himself screaming, and for a moment the wires are visible. They crackle with energy, connecting him to Sheril. Connecting his still-attached arm to Sheril, who looks the slightest bit afraid.

His Innocence runs down the wires in streaks of green light, and when they reach Sheril, it is the Noah who is paralyzed, eyes rolling back and body twitching.

Lavi sees his chance. The hallucination still swims across his vision, but he fixes his eye on Sheril and runs, hammer forgotten on the ground but arm sizzling with the same energy. He can feel it longing for the contact of the Dark matter, can feel it longing to rip through it and lift it away. If he can land this hit, it will change the tide of the battle.

"Stop," says Tyki. His voice rings as though right in Lavi's ear.

Lavi stops, a shudder running through him. Sheril collapses, but Lavi has already turned around.

Tyki's hand is inside Kanda's chest – around his heart, Lavi knows – and Lavi feels every last bit of hope crash around his feet. He'll do anything, he'll give _anything_ , please, _please, no_ –

Tyki smiles at him. "This will hurt you, won't it, boy?"

"Lavi, don't stop!" Kanda barks. "I'll regenerate you idiot!"

But Lavi's afraid to find out of this is true, and in the moment longer he hesitates the strings take hold again.

Sheril makes his way to Tyki's side; Lavi hears the heavy footfalls, and when Sheril passes him he can see the Noah swaying.

"Really, Junior," Sheril says. He props an arm on Tyki's shoulder, which puts him in contact with Kanda as well. Lavi wants to shout, wants to launch himself forward, but his muscles tense uselessly.

"What a nice –" Sheril says, and Lavi's right arm bends at the elbow, fingers touching his shoulder "– arm " and there is a crack like a gunshot, and it bends farther.

Kanda twists and slashes, Mugen cutting across Sheril's face. In the process, he tears himself from the hand still plunged into his chest, and Lavi stops breathing.

But Tyki's hand is empty; it had slipped right through. Tyki looks dumbfounded, but he directs the expression at Kanda, as though he hadn't expected Kanda to move. Even Kanda is still for a second, looking shocked that he didn't die on the spot.

Sheril had let out a vicious snarl when Kanda's blade cut him, and now he clutches at his face. Kanda lunges for him once more, but is buffeted by a blast of energy that sends both him and Lavi back into the trees. Lavi's vision goes black for a moment, and when he comes to on the ground he blinks furiously to clear it.

Sheril lowers his hands. He stands in an awkward posture, arms held out slightly from his sides, head lolling. His sightless eyes ooze what looks like tar. The energy that blasted Lavi and Kanda away retreats and fogs around him, swirling thicker, condensing until he is no longer visible.

"He's fixated on you now," Tyki says from behind them. He means Kanda, and before Lavi can blink there is a hideous creature sailing out of the fog. Its spindly claws go to Kanda's throat, and it pulls Kanda with it through the trees. Lavi makes to follow, but Tyki darts in front of him.

"Sorry, but I need an opponent too."

He won't let Lavi past him, but he also won't do anything more than toy with him.

Lavi's right arm didn't break, and he wonders if he hallucinated that too. He felt a split second of pain, he's sure he did. Maybe it healed just as quickly. It's his Innocence after all; it has already shown itself to be capable of more than he's asked of it.

His hammer is still lost somewhere in the grass, but he doesn't need it. Maybe it's because he is so desperate that his Innocence responds to him without its usual channeling source. He brings down lightning, he brings down fire. He opens the earth at Tyki's feet, but Tyki dances out of the way. And every time he tries to find where Kanda and Sheril have gone, Tyki is smiling in front of him. Too much time is passing; Kanda has been out of his sight for too long.

And then Lenalee reappears with such stealth and strength that she sends Tyki straight off the edge of the cliff a hundred yards away.

"Where's Kanda?" she asks Lavi. The back of her head is matted with blood and her pupils are unequal. She must have just regained consciousness. But now that she's up and making herself a target, Lavi can't just leave her too.

"Sheril Awoke," he says. His entire body hums with the force of his Innocence. He cannot stop trembling.

Lenalee pales even further. "You go. I can take care of Tyki."

"Oh no no," Tyki says, back too soon, and Lavi feels the hand inside of him. "We can't have you getting in the way."

"Lenalee, go after him!"

Tyki clicks his tongue, and the Akuma from before swoop back in. "Please stop making my job difficult," he says, with a put-out sigh. "I really am trying, you know. To keep things simple."

The Akuma converge on Lenalee and all she can do is turn her fight to them. All Lavi can do is watch, Tyki's hand in his chest.

He can't just twist out of this one. He has no idea why Tyki hadn't held on to Kanda, but he feels the fingers firmly around his own heart, a sensation so wrong he thinks shucking off his skin would be more pleasant.

"Do you trust your Allen?" Tyki purrs in his ear. He stands in Lavi's blind spot, surely intentional.

"Let me go."

If he tries to get Tyki with his Innocence the same way he got Sheril, it might just travel straight through Tyki's arm and zap his own heart.

"Do you know what he's been up to? Oh, I just want to kill you now, do you know how hard I've been suppressing it? But he'd be so angry. It would ruin _everything_."

"Let me go."

Their Allen, or the Fourteenth? Suppressing it. Trying to keep things simple. Making my job difficult.

"So are you still working for that little club that turns on its own members? How is the morale at home base?"

There is a message in all this. But he can't focus. Where is Kanda? Where is Lenalee? It's been so _long._

"Let me _go_."

"Mm-mm."

"Then fight me!"

"Nope, got tired of that. Agh!"

The fingers release him, and Tyki recoils. Lavi spins around and sees him clutching his hand as though burned. A very nasty grin crosses Tyki's face. "Though you've just given me the motivation again."

Lenalee flits back into sight and clobbers him, boots sinking into the ground with Tyki beneath them. "Lavi –" she says, but she's already sagging, hands on her knees. Lavi leaps in to buffet the Level Three that heads straight at her.

But Tyki lifts an arm from the rut he is in and snaps his fingers. The Akuma halt. Lavi pulls Lenalee away; she clutches at his arm for balance.

"All right, all right," Tyki says, getting slowly to his feet. He takes a few moments to cup his chin in his palm and give a quick sideways push. He opens and closes his mouth several times, rubs at his jaw. "It's finished. You can run squealing to him now."

Lavi knows where to go like it's instinct, and it isn't long before he sees the aftermath. Trees splintered, great channels gouged out of the earth. Lenalee's hand is in his, but when they reach the clearing she leans against a tree and tells him to keep going.

There is nowhere else to go. Kanda lies face down on the other side of the clearing.

He sees Kanda in _pieces._ Right arm gone. Right leg gone. He understands the message in that, and is almost sick.

"Yuu." It is less than a whisper. A thick smear of blood trails into the underbrush, marking the path Kanda had dragged himself along.

Lavi staggers forward, drops to his knees. He turns Kanda over, too much blood and too much dirt sticking to the blood. Skin too pale, but also still warm.

"Shit, Yuu. Oh God. Yuu." He pushes the hair out of Kanda's face with shaking fingers. Mugen is a few paces away, whole but inactive.

He hears a rasp, and a wet, choking exhale. Kanda's eyes crack open and find him.

"I got him," Kanda says, with a twitch of his bloodied lips that Lavi knows is meant to be a smirk. "He's – there." The slightest tilt of his head toward the bushes. "Looked – shit – couldn' stand – lookin'."

"Stop it," Lavi says, meaning the talking, because the more Kanda tries the more slurred he becomes, the shorter his breaths.

"Lavi."

His name is just a wisp of air. Kanda starts to lift the only arm he has left, but Lavi pushes it back to the ground. The he pushes the shreds of Kanda's coat off his shoulder.

"Why isn't it growing?" He sweeps his hand over Kanda's tattoo. He doesn't know if he's yelling or whispering – it sounds like both, to his own ears. "Why isn't it doing anything? Why isn't it getting bigger?"

Kanda watches him like he doesn't understand the words. His eyelids droop.

"Yuck," says Tyki, rustling around in the bushes. Lavi can't even remember him passing by. "You made nasty work of him. I want to ask how you did it but –" he sucks in a breath "– I also really want to tear you apart more. He's my brother, you know. Here, take these. I'm leaving." Kanda's arm and leg fly out of the brush. The arm hits Kanda in the chest and rolls off; the leg lands a few feet from his head.

Kanda lets out a weak hiss, the sound of air going slowly out of a balloon, and the tattoo starts to crawl farther down his arm. Eyebrows screwed up, he bares his teeth in a grimace. Lavi's afraid that just this expression will take the last bit out of him before the regeneration can catch up.

The blood pooling beneath Kanda's body slowly begins to flow up into the stigmata on his left forearm, and his amputated limbs reform where they should be. Lavi sees this in his peripheral; he is watching Kanda's face – flared nose, teeth ribboned in red, pain so excruciating it dampens Kanda's eyelashes.

Slowly the grimace evens out, and though Kanda is still tattered and bloody he is at least, in body, whole. Lavi can see him breathing, but he puts his hand over Kanda's heart anyway, just to make sure. A steady beat beneath his palm.

"We can't just stay here," Lenalee says eventually, and Lavi hadn't heard her come over either. The sun has turned an end of the day orange and skirts the treetops. She kneels beside him, puts a hand on Kanda's shoulder. "Kanda? How safe is it to move you?" Her voice is small and trembling, and yet she still manages to sound surer than Lavi feels.

Kanda takes in a whistling breath, holds it for a moment, and says, "Ugh." He squints an eye open, focuses on her. "After all that, you can't just let me sleep?" His voice is weak, but there is such a familiar pull of scorn in it that Lavi's eye wells up.

"Rabbit," Kanda says tiredly, but Lavi has already pressed the heel of his palm to his eye to staunch any tears that may try to escape. His other hand is still over Kanda's heart. The heat has seeped well into his fingertips, and the beat goes on strong.

Kanda allows himself to be picked up, and with his arms over their shoulders, the three of them work their way back to the inn in town. They are a pitiful sight, Lavi knows, and from the slow, even tempo of Kanda's breathing – not at all in tune with their hobbling pace – he knows Kanda is trying to meditate away the pain from internal injuries not completely healed.

They all made it out alive, but Lavi can't shake the feeling that Tyki had some role to play in this.

* * *

Twenty-four hours later, Kanda is out of bed. Lenalee catches Lavi on the stairs when he's on his way back from a meager dinner downstairs – his first meal of the day, his appetite has made itself scarce.

"He's up," she says, tiredness burrowed deep beneath her eyes. Neither of them slept much. She steps aside so Lavi can rush past.

Mugen is propped against the table between the two beds. Lavi's hammer is back in its holster on his thigh. He'd never picked it out of the grass, but sometime after they'd returned and gotten Kanda to bed, he'd noticed it on the nightstand. The Innocence was still safe in his pocket as well. He hadn't had the energy to bother questioning either. He hasn't deactivated – his nerves have not allowed him to.

Now, he takes in Kanda sitting at the edge of the bed in the cotton pants Lenalee bought from the shop down the street, and the bandages wrapped – perhaps a bit inexpertly – around his torso, also done by Lenalee.

"You stupid _fuck,_ " Lavi says. He surprises himself, but he lets the words come. "I told you. I _told_ you."

Kanda's eyes narrow dangerously. "I'm alive, am I not?"

"How could you risk that? How could you fucking risk that?"

"Figured it could take one more."

The tattoo is like a sleeve now, and it reaches down Kanda's side as well, and over his shoulder and down his back.

"So it's back to being reckless, huh?" Lavi says. He steps up to Kanda, meets that fiery gaze with one that doesn't feel half as sturdy. Masks were so much easier when he had the Bookman there to keep an eye on him.

"It's back to trying to kill them when we get the fucking chance to."

"What about waiting for Allen?!"

"He's too late!" Kanda yells. "Don't you get it? He's too late! It's on us now!"

"What if you _don't_ piece back together?! What if next time it can't manage that much?!

" _Who the fuck cares?!_ "

Lavi draws back his hand, fist already made, but this is just the fighter in him, just the soldier, the memories from the battlefield still fresh, wanting to hurt the one who hurt Kanda but only having Kanda in front of him. Anger, grief, fear. What a frightening combination.

His arm shakes, twinges a bit in his injured shoulder. He feels his fingernails bite into the soft flesh of his palm, and thinks that he needs to trim them soon. His jaw is clenched so tightly he feels the ache up into his temples. And Kanda just looks up at him, eyes daring him to.

Lavi lowers his arm, and then he steps closer and wraps both around Kanda's shoulders.

"I care," he says. He holds Kanda to him like Kanda might try to escape, fingers digging into the tops of Kanda's arms. But Kanda doesn't try to escape. He doesn't do anything besides turn his head to the side, so Lavi holds on tighter, pulls Kanda even closer though this is hardly possible.

The second time around it was Kanda Yuu who decided to become an exorcist, but what if this was just because there was nothing else for him to do? Maybe there is nothing noble behind any of it – his return, his continued fight, the promises he's made. Lavi could very well be the one who wants to see nobility where it is not.

Maybe Lavi's made him out to be better than he is.

And maybe all Kanda really hopes for is an end.

* * *

 _No, he said he wanted something after this. He_ said – _he asked if we would still be. The two of us. After this is over._

Though maybe, Lavi thinks, he was just getting caught up in the moment. Such a human fault. It's one he's fallen into himself since straying from the Bookman path.

"I'm not going back," Kanda tells him later that night, once the streetlights glow outside.

"They'll kill you," Lavi says. "Central will kill you."

"Heh. Let them try."

There's no changing Kanda's mind, he knows that much. Just like there's no way to get Kanda to finish the spinach pie sitting half-eaten on the plate on the bedside table ("Tastes too green," Kanda had said, still a picky eater after everything).

They sit on opposite beds, facing each other. Knees nearly touching. Lavi bites the inside of his cheek, trying to keep the frustration from mounting again.

"So what're you gonna do, then?"

"I'm going to find the damn Beansprout."

"So you _don't_ believe it's too late."

"It doesn't matter either way. I'll find him, and if he's the Fourteenth, I'll kill him. I made that vow and I intend to keep it."

Lavi sighs and drops his face into his hand. He's so tired. When was the last time he had a full night's sleep? Everything is missions – find the Innocence, return to base, slip in a few hours of shuteye and go right back out again. Try not to get clobbered while dispatched.

"What about you?" Kanda says.

Lavi peeks over the tops of his fingers. "Y'askin' me to come with you?"

Kanda's stare says _Yes._

Lenalee's already contacted Headquarters and arranged them their trip home – they're catching their first train in the early hours of the morning.

"You gonna ask Lenalee too?"

"I'm asking you."

Lavi sighs again, rubs his fingertips into his forehead. "Jesus, Yuu."

"You don't have to."

"Just shut up a second and let me make up my mind."

He'd hardly be safer either way. And either way, he could only look after one of them – Kanda or Lenalee. But with the Order Lenalee has the others on her side – he knows that together they can watch each other's backs, if Komui's been able to relay the message around (he's sure Komui has). The answer is simple then: he can't just leave Kanda alone.

Also, he just wants to be with Kanda. But this is the selfish kind of want, the one that is more for him than for Kanda. It's a mess, being in love during a war. The Bookman code was right to keep him detached, probably. Decisions were so much easier. Another's life on the line didn't feel like his own.

There is a loud knock, and Lenalee comes in without waiting for a beckon.

"I've been listening," she says, unashamed. Her tone is blunt and her features are too – it's like she is trying not to cry. "I'll cover for you, but only if you promise to come back."

Both Kanda and Lavi are too stunned to say anything. So Lenalee waits, clenched jaw and clenched fists.

"You're going back," Kanda finally says to her.

"I have my brother."

Kanda looks at Lavi.

Lenalee says, "And you have each other."

"And you," Lavi says quietly.

Lenalee shakes her head, not denying what he said but simply casting away his guilt. "And nothing says we can't still keep an eye out for each other while in separate places." And then she flings herself on them, one arm around each of them and nearly smashing their heads together. "Promise you'll come back. Promise."

Lavi puts his hand on her back, turns his face into her shoulder. "Promise," he says. When Kanda remains silent, he says, " _Yuu_."

And Kanda says, "I promise."

She never asks for the Innocence in Lavi's pocket. Lavi only realizes this when he and Kanda are well on the road into the dark.

* * *

Like Lavi predicted, it doesn't take long for Central to send forces after them. He just hopes whatever tale Lenalee told has held, and that it's just a search party. Kanda's sense of perception is a blessing, and they are able to avoid them easily at first. Lavi wheedles information out of townspeople with ease, and so they learn where their trackers have and haven't been, and are likely headed next.

They find themselves, always, where there is Innocence. At first they don't know what to do with it – of course their instinct is to collect it, because what have they been for so long but fighters and weapon collectors?

But they aren't going back to Headquarters. If anything, they'd be keeping potential firepower from the Order. If that doesn't fit the bill for treason, Lavi doesn't know what does.

"You're a General, Yuu," he says, when they come across the third Innocence and are seriously trying to figure out what course of action to take. "Isn't holding on to this stuff part of the job description?"

So they stuff them in a satchel that Lavi carries most of the time – and he only complains a little bit that he's doing Kanda's job for him. First one, then two, they hardly take any finding, three four five. Kanda is uneasy and Lavi is too. There are not enough Akuma – this too is a blessing, yes, but also something is very wrong. Though that's not to say that Level Threes and Fours, even in pairs and clusters of three, are an easy match.

The end has been in play for a while, Lavi thinks. He thinks a lot of things – things like what is the third side doing, and where is it doing it? Things like, why haven't either of them Fallen?

Sometimes he gets the paranoid feeling that someone is in danger, that he'll look up and see Akuma attacking not them but _someone._ He thinks of Lenalee and Komui and Krory and Miranda and Marie, and hopes very hard, and can never banish the worry coiling at the pit of his stomach.

Another feeling he cannot banish is the tug. They pass by towns – it is better to avoid them, because this makes their trail harder to track – and he'll think, _There's Innocence in there._

When he mentions this to Kanda, along with, "Why the hell are they, like, flocking around us?" Kanda shrugs and says, "Maybe it's you."

Lavi thinks he's trying to joke, which has become a rare thing from Kanda. Whatever small joy he may have been able to find while the two of them shared covers and a room at the Order has been mostly sapped away. Everything is so serious.

So Lavi clings to this tiny joke, even slips his hand into Kanda's for a minute, laces their fingers together. They're far from any town so no one will see. "Do I smell super holy or something?"

Kanda snorts quietly. His fingers tighten in Lavi's – enough for Lavi to feel like his feet have been swept out from under him. "You smell like you need a bath."

* * *

Once, they run into their former comrades. There is Innocence in the village they pass through to replenish their food supplies, and they are not the only ones aware of this. Lavi sees a glimpse of Miranda from the other end of an alley, and when he tells Kanda this, Kanda says, "Let them take it. We have to leave."

They still haven't decided what to do with the ones they've gathered. Lavi thinks it's a little worrying that the one answer that pops repeatedly into his mind is _Bury them in a really deep hole so nobody can ever find them._

It is the end of dusk, the residual light hardly able to ward off the shadows any longer, though it is not quite dark enough for the artificial lights to do much either. The Akuma have shown up. Kanda and Lavi watch from behind the school building as the signs of battle retreat deeper into the city.

Across the street is the courthouse, which is where the tug tries to draw Lavi toward. He convinced Kanda that they should at least try – it seems that even Kanda has come to the unspoken conclusion that this collection task is important, probably some remnant of his grudge against the Order. They figure they have one chance to attempt to sneak in and steal the Innocence without being noticed.

"Now," Kanda says, and they dart into the recently vacated street, citizens having run for shelter when the first monsters appeared.

But some Akuma are too meddlesome, and this one has been watching them. It materializes in front of them as though out of thin air, a bulbous Level Two, and then blasts them apart from each other.

"Go!" Kanda shouts, recovering quickly and engaging the Akuma.

Lavi runs across the street, through the side alley. He thinks he has to aim for the back of the building, for a window there – has a feeling this is the best route. He runs around the corner and skids right into Marie.

He claps a hand over his mouth, stumbles back, hardly dares breathe.

"Lavi?!"

Of course, he can't silence the beat of his heart. Still, he keeps his lips firmly shut. Will Marie fight him for the Innocence? Should he just let Marie take it? Shit, he really screwed things up. They can't let anyone know where they are, but there's nothing he can do about this – nothing that he'd be willing to do.

"Take it," Marie says.

Lavi's eye widens. There is a chorus of screams, and he sees Miranda's Time Record glow over the tops of the buildings several blocks away. Getting closer. He and Kanda have to get out of here.

" _Take it,_ " Marie insists, already backing away. "The fewer we bring back, the better. Take it!"

"What are you –"

"Is Kanda with you? Neither of you have Fallen?"

"No, but –"

"You didn't see me, I didn't hear you," Marie says briskly, and he's running away through the alley, back toward Miranda and whoever else.

Lavi slips straight into the courtroom via an open window. The Innocence sits on the bench as though waiting for him. When he backtracks, Kanda has almost dispatched the Level Two, and he swoops in and delivers the final blow.

"Let's go," he says, and they flee the town before they can be drawn back in. The tug is still there though, like guilt threading through his ribs. He hopes the others are okay.

* * *

Of course, he tells Kanda, but only after he's replayed the exchange from every possible angle, has documented it and all its implications thoroughly into the archives of his brain.

Kanda looks, for a moment, relieved to hear that Marie is well. If he feels any guilt, he does a good job of hiding it.

They are in a ramshackle inn at the very edge of a village, behind a storehouse of grain. It is a risky move to stop here, but they have gone so long without good sleep or a full meal, or that bath Lavi (and Kanda too) needed so badly. They are an hour and a half by foot from the town they took the Innocence from, and Lavi is trusting Marie's word.

"Looks like we chose the right side," Kanda says, with another of those possible reaches for humor.

Lavi shrugs. "I guess." They just travel east, and east, and east, following the trail of Innocence, waiting for the next real ambush. Waiting for Noah that they might not even be able to kill. " _Man_ , I can't wait 'til this is all over."

Somehow they've gone from Kanda rubbing salve onto a healing burn on his cheek to him straddling Kanda's lap, though they are clothed and haven't done anything very suggestive yet. He grins. "Lenalee said she'd take us on vacation."

"There won't be any vacations when this is over."

"Aw, c'mon Yuu. You can at least imagine it. Akuma gone, Earl dead, world saved, Innocence gone too. All the normal people won't have to worry about weird magical things happening anymore, so we can all go off to some sandy beach somewhere and lie in the sun and drink from coconuts."

Kanda's wet hair is up in the messy knot Lavi likes so much. He pushes Kanda's bangs off of his forehead, while Kanda's thumbs rub slow circles into his sides.

"I wanna know what it's like, you know?" Lavi says. "Just being a real person, on a real vacation, lying in the sand and thinking about nothing."

"I'm not a real person," Kanda says.

Lavi laughs, a sharp bite to it. "What the hell are you on?"

"I'm not," Kanda says. "I wasn't born. I don't have parents. I'm an experiment."

"Were," Lavi says. "You were."

Kanda breaks eye contact, gaze shifting to the side.

"Yuu." When Kanda refuses to look, Lavi shakes his shoulder. "Yuu. Yuu, seriously, please don't do this. Please?" He lets out a long breath, shuts his eye. Summons, from the depths of who knows where anymore, the tranquility he will need for this. This is another reason he cannot wait for the war to end – he can't remember what it feels like to be at ease.

"You're pretty real to me, Yuu." He puts his hand on Kanda's face, thumb on one cheek and the rest of his fingers on the other, and squeezes until Kanda's lips purse. "You got that pretty mouth. That pretty hair." Kanda's eyes flash to him, and he grins. "Sorry, sorry, _handsome_ face. Your breath smells bad in the morning. You throw up when you drink too much – seriously, be careful, it scares me that your regenerative thingy is so tired now." He moves his hand into Kanda's pretty, messy hair, touches his forehead to Kanda's.

"You're warm. I like when you kiss me. That feels pretty real. You like kissing me too, and that's real. We're here together. We've got each other, and that's real. Right?"

Kanda's arms go around him.

"If I'm enough for you with a real arm and a fake arm and lotsa missing memories, then you're enough just how you are."

It wins him a kiss, and he comforts himself with the thought that yes, Kanda really has gone a little soft somewhere deep inside.

"I'll write your history, Yuu," he whispers, and this wins him fingers in his hair and a much harder kiss.

They cast off their clothes and he climbs back into Kanda's lap, lets Kanda inside of him. He moves frantically for those moments, just before completion, that leave him gasping out words, and sometimes just sounds, that he hopes encompass all that he feels. He holds onto Kanda's shoulders, one real hand and one Innocence hand, while they do what is hardly innocent and not at all holy, though it feels so real and good that he thinks the church people – the people who don't like it – whoever the fuck – are wrong.

Afterwards he is so blissfully satiated, so at ease, finally, at last. "We should really stop at inns more," he mumbles, cheek planted on Kanda's chest and not leaving anytime soon. His limbs are heavy and light at the same time, it's so _comfortable_. Kanda's fingers run slowly through his hair, and his eye droops shut. When Kanda hums, he feels it as much as he hears it.

"S'at a yes?"

"It means, go to sleep."

He smiles at the tired croak to Kanda's voice, and thinks, _Okay._

* * *

In the dream he cannot wake himself from, it is dark all around, one solid shade. The Finders are sprawled at his feet, the light from a broken lamp illuminating their crumpled forms. His hands feel wet and warm, but he can't make himself look at them. A ways away in the blackness there is another glow of light, and then a shadow crosses in front of it. The light dims, contained in something.

A pop of brightness, a miniature fireworks show, and the light goes out completely. Lavi feels a dull pang, like something has been pulled out of him but he is under anesthesia. There is a shuffling sound behind him, and he turns and comes face to face with another Finder.

His hand reaches, closes around a throat. The hood falls back, and it is Road. Her grin curls up her face, and he lets go. The handprint on her neck is red. "Wake up, wake up, Bookman," she says.

His eye shoots open, and his breath catches. It's too bright, the light disorients him, how did he get here? Is he free? Did he escape?

No, no, that was long ago. He shuts is eye and finds where he is. The bed, the inn, Kanda beside him. They fell asleep with the lamp on.

He turns his head and opens his eye again. Kanda sleeps soundly, lips slightly parted, one arm across his stomach and the other by his ear.

It's not enough to still the tremors working through Lavi's body. He gets out of bed and to the door as quietly as he can, feet wanting to stumble the entire way but he doesn't let them. His hand shakes on the doorknob, but he manages to shut the door with barely a sound.

Outside in the cool night, he takes in great lungfuls of air. He sinks down, back against the wood of the wall, until he sits in the dirt, head between his knees and sweat beading from every pore. He forces himself to breathe, forces the rush in his ears to quiet.

He is sitting on a pointy rock. He uses this as his anchor, focuses on the very literal pain in his ass – right cheek, to be exact – to turn his mind from fading images of grins and shadows and bodies around him.

"Not looking so good, Bookman."

He scrambles to his feet, reaches for his hammer but of course his left thigh is bare. What an idiot. How weak. One of these days he's going to really screw them over – maybe even today.

Tyki's voice smiles to him out of the darkness. "Calm yourself, Bookman, I'm not here for a chicken fight. Nothing's going to jump out at you."

Lavi senses, in his blind spot, something rushing at him. He doesn't know how he knows it is there, can't see it, but the cognition comes in one second and he moves the very next, flinging himself to the side and rolling out of the way.

"Oops!" says Tyki. "Looks like I forgot about one. It's difficult casting them all away, you know, when there are so many to keep an eye on. You're hoarding quite the collection. It isn't making my job any easier."

Lavi stands, moves away from the wall so he won't be pinned. All he sees is empty road and the dark windows of the grain storage building across the way; the streetlights show no Akuma or Noah. There's a fresh cut on his arm, though, from his tumble.

"Did you really think that you've been so lucky as to avoid capture by those following you all on your own?"

"What the hell do you want?" Lavi says, eye searching frantically.

"What do I want?" The voice is musing now. "Many things. Mostly, for a task less boring than keeping ants in a line. Also, it's difficult, with that collection you have, to keep myself from killing you, so I wish that were easier too."

"Why aren't you?"

A long, weary sigh. And then Lavi feels Tyki right behind him. "Good question."

There is a crash, and Tyki jumps out of range of Kanda's Hell's Insects. He lands in front of the storehouse, and Lavi looks over and sees Kanda in the inn's doorway, Mugen shining.

"How…touching," Tyki says.

Love bites show starkly on Kanda's skin, tinged the color of rust beneath the ruddy glow of the streetlight.

"Where's the Beansprout?" Kanda growls.

"How not touching," Tyki says. "He's occupied at the moment. An old master of his, boring stuff, they're planning. Yawn." He examines his fingernails, then gives Kanda and Lavi a little pout. "I was hoping for a warmer welcome. Surely we're friends now?"

"I'll kill you right now," Kanda says.

Tyki holds up his hands. "Fine. I'm done. Have fun with the Akuma."

It races past Lavi straight for Kanda, and on instinct Lavi raises the stump of his right arm. The seal glows and the end of his arm forms, but the light continues onward. It strikes the Akuma – only a Level Two – in the blink of an eye, like a flash of lightning, and the Akuma disintegrates completely. Tyki is gone, and Lavi has the feeling they have seen all they will of him tonight.

Kanda looks stunned, but it only takes a moment for the sour expression to retake his features. "We're leaving," he says, turning straight back into the inn.

Lavi knows Kanda is angry at him.

"Yuu I'm – shit, I'm sorry," he says, catching up to him on the stairs and lowering his voice. "I shouldn't have left my hammer, I know –"

"That's not it," Kanda says. He doesn't slow his steps, and doesn't face Lavi until they're back in their room and the door is shut. "The problem," he says, shrugging on his traveling coat, "is that you go off alone."

"Huh?"

Kanda steps close, takes a handful of Lavi's shirt. He isn't taller, but it feels like he is now. His expression – an upset that goes too many directions, defensive and angry and demanding – promises that he is only going to say this once. "You woke up, and were panicked, and left to deal with it alone. If I'm a real person, if we _have each other_ –" He grits his teeth; this is very difficult for him, Lavi knows "– then let me try to help you, so that I know that I can."

He lets Lavi go, turns away to gather his pack. "Hurry up. We can't stay here."

Numbly, Lavi dresses and finds his boots. He tries to meet Kanda's eyes but Kanda won't look at him. He slips his hammer into its holster and follows Kanda out the door, and thinks, _Is that really where his priorities are?_


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N:** The end! This was a very self-indulgent fic; I had such a blast writing it and look forward to writing more for this pairing in the future. I do have an epilogue piece that I've started, but I know that not everyone likes epilogues, and I'm quite content with where this ends anyway, so I'll be posting that as a separate piece. Sometime. Thanks for reading!

* * *

"He's following us," Kanda says. "That damned bastard is following us."

Lavi believes him. He has the distinct feeling of being watched, which he'd chock up to paranoia if not for Kanda's perception and the fresh memory of just a few hours ago. Still, despite feeling like there are eyes on them, he doesn't actually feel like they are in any danger, at least for now. Which, in itself, is confusing enough, what with who is following them.

The scenery is the same as it usually is. Nature, and lots of it. Trees, grass, bare ground, the sky overhead. Fall has begun, but the summer heat lingers during the daytime.

They eat dried meat and drier bread for dinner, at the foot of separate walnut trees. The day has been quiet – still is, because the sun is still out. They didn't get the good sleep they'd planned on last night, so it's been just another day going off of draining energy.

It has been quiet because there have been no Akuma, and now the reason for that is known. But it has also been quiet because neither of them have spoken beyond Kanda's grumbled statement earlier. Usually, Lavi would have tried to break the silence, pester a bit, but he knows that would have just driven the tension between them deeper.

Kanda sits with his back straight against the tree trunk, attention on the forest out ahead. Lavi sits several feet away with his attention on Kanda, the Innocence a subtle weight in the satchel in his lap.

 _Let me help you so that I know that I can,_ Kanda had said. Which means what, exactly?

Does Kanda think he can't help people? He's done it a lot. But if helping Lavi means something different than helping humanity in general, then… Implications. Promises.

The meat tires out his jaw, and he sets the strip on his knee. "Yuu…" he says, but he doesn't know what to tack on, and it doesn't seem like Kanda heard him anyway.

He watches Kanda's profile – an expression that isn't unhappy, but is not happy, eyes slightly narrowed, teeth tearing chunks off of the meat mechanically – and wonders how much of him is heartbreak.

Back when Lavi had asked – and it feels like the hospital bed was years ago, but it was just months – Kanda had said things had ended 'right'. Now that he knows the story, Lavi thinks that there is no way an ending like that could ever be right. It was loss. That's all it was. He cannot fathom a loss that large.

Except when Kanda was in pieces, maybe it felt kind of the same. No. No, of course not. Kanda had more than a life's worth of love to mourn.

So why is Kanda so _angry_ at him? All he did was try not to wake Kanda up after his nightmare – that's all he was thinking, to not burden Kanda, to not make Kanda lose the sleep he so needed. Leave it to Kanda to make him feel like he'd done something incredibly selfish instead.

He runs his hand through is hair, sleepy and frustrated and hating this confusion. He rubs his palm over his eye, over his cheek, to his neck. His thumb brushes against his earlobe in the process and –

He touches his earlobe. Nothing. He touches his other earlobe. The hoop is there.

"Ah, I lost an earring."

Kanda finally looks at him. "Is that important?"

"Well, I _liked_ them," Lavi says, now feeling mopey on top of everything else.

"Well, you have one still."

Lavi huffs. "We might as well trade it for food. Damn, we shoulda traded them when I had two."

"You should have thought of that a long time ago," Kanda says. His tone isn't a mean one – it _is_ , because Kanda has very few other tones, but for him it is just neutral – but it still sparks Lavi's anger.

He throws his strip of meat at Kanda, and Kanda doesn't lift his hand in time to block it. It hits him on the forehead and ricochets off into the patchy grass. The image is almost funny, and Lavi feels the anger dissolve immediately. His emotions are in vast need of sleep, too.

"Don't throw your food, idiot," Kanda says, leaning over to retrieve it. "We don't have unlimited supplies."

"It hurts my jaw."

Kanda gives him a bland look. "You've dealt with worse, I'm sure. Here, it's got dirt on it. Enjoy." He flings it straight back at Lavi, and his aim is true – it bounces off of Lavi's forehead.

"Yuu, you got more dirt on it." Lavi takes it back out of the grass and looks at it sullenly.

"Minerals," Kanda says.

"Yuu, that's science stuff! I didn't know you were smart enough to know that."

"Fuck off and eat."

Lavi crawls over to Kanda, sits beside him. "I'll trade you my mineral-covered meat for your mineral-deficient meat."

"The only thing deficient is your brain."

Lavi's stomach twists, but this is pleasant for once. It's an old feeling; he remembers it distantly. Something thrilling, and hopeful. Ah, yes. This is flirting. Like when he used to braid Kanda's hair. Like the time Kanda kicked him beneath the cafeteria table.

He doesn't give himself time to second-guess it; he simply leans in and kisses Kanda's cheek. "Sorry," he says, pulling back without looking Kanda in the eye. Self-consciousness grips him. He's not used to the feeling of Kanda's cheek beneath his lips and not used to the feeling of doing something so innocent. But the apology is for last night.

Kanda doesn't say anything, and after a few moments he gets back to eating. Lavi doesn't take it as rejection, though, or as being ignored. He pours a small amount of water from his canteen onto his strip of meat and resumes eating also.

"After this is over," Kanda eventually says, not looking at him either, "we can get you another earring."

There it is again, Lavi thinks. After this. We.

* * *

That night he dreams of jagged noise and jagged slices of colors, things flashing past his eyes too quickly. He uses both eyes in this dream, even though he isn't doing anything beyond standing still in shadows with light opening up ahead. He knows it's a dream because his second eye works normally, something it hasn't done for over a decade.

It is hard to find sense in the images before him, but he makes out flailing legs, white coats, a tangle of hanging things, a raised platform.

Screams, shouts, each in different timbres. The white coats converge on the platform, the flailing legs go still, his vision tilts and blurs.

He wakes up and his arm burns, and when he puts his hand over his face he realizes he activated his Innocence without being aware of it. A turbulent emotion sits at the base of his throat – something like rage, or profound grief. Or maybe he just feels like he's going to throw up.

"God," he says, feeling the goosebumps raise all over his body.

"Are you okay?"

He reaches out his left hand, and when Kanda takes it his grip is so firm that it stills the trembling.

"Sorry, Yuu. How long has it been?"

"You slept for a few hours. You should sleep more. I'm fine staying awake."

Lavi shakes his head, hiding his eye in the crook of his elbow. "Don't think I can sleep any more. Gimme a second and I'll take watch."

So Kanda holds his hand for a little while longer, until Lavi can temper the shaking and the awful mix of emotions grappling him. Once they've switched roles and he sits against the tree trunk and Kanda lies with his head on his bunched up jacket, Lavi reaches again for Kanda's hand, bumps his fingers into it very tentatively.

Kanda laces their fingers together, and it helps the night pass.

* * *

For nearly a week they are followed, and nothing more comes of it. The satchel full of Innocence bounces against Lavi's thigh. They only add to it once.

"You think so too, don't you?" Lavi says after they've stopped to refill their canteens at a stream. He pats the satchel. "It's slowing down."

"Hm," Kanda says, which Lavi deciphers as 'So now what?'

They've spoken a little bit about the fact that they don't know where Allen is, and don't know where they're headed, and don't know what their next aim should even be. With the Innocence guiding them along there had been at least some sense of direction, but Lavi doesn't feel the tug as strongly anymore. Or, rather, it rears its head in moments of profound worry that come out of the blue, oftentimes setting in after he wakes from his nightmares.

"Do we wait for Tyki to show up and try to take him down?" Lavi suggests. And then, louder: "Hey Tyki, you wanna show yourself so we can beat each other up or somethin'?"

Kanda makes a coughing sound, and for one confused moment Lavi thinks he is laughing. Then Kanda falls.

"Yuu!"

There is some sort of chain coming out of Kanda's back, stretching between him and the figure in scarlet emerging from between two trees not far away.

"Yuu, shit, what is this?"

Lavi tugs at the chain with his Innocence hand, and a sickly sensation rushes up his arm. Kanda struggles to his hands and knees, but seems unable to do much more with the chain attached to him. Lavi tries to break it with a burst of energy, but he only produces a chip in one of the links.

"Surrender yourselves," the figure says, voice deep. Another figure emerges, then two more. Four in all, standing just inside the line of trees.

Are they Crows? They are something like it. Lavi feels simultaneously a tug and revulsion. They each have an arm glowing with Innocence, much like Lavi's, except the energy swirling around their limbs is unstable, shooting out in random bursts and undulating like it is unhappy.

"What are you?" Lavi says. "What do you want? What are you doing to him?"

"Surrender yourselves," the Crow in front says again, and now Lavi hears the void in that voice. The Crow's stare doesn't quite reach him, aimed a bit above his head and to the side.

Lavi takes out his hammer. But before he can figure out his attack, Tyki is there, slashing right through the chain.

Kanda falls to his elbows and the chain dissipates.

Tyki looks at his hand. "Disgusting," he says, lip curling, and then he is at the first Crow, thrusting the same hand into its chest and ripping out its heart.

The other three spring into action, with a combination of what Lavi recognizes as Crow spells and the mutated Innocence in their arms. Tyki parries them all, but is quickly on the defensive.

Lavi helps Kanda to his feet, but Kanda shakes him off in favor of unsheathing Mugen. One of the Crows has detached from Tyki and barrels their way. Her hood has fallen back and her hair streams out behind her, her head tilting awkwardly on her shoulders.

Each time Lavi or Kanda's Innocence comes in contact with the Crow's, sparks shoot up. The sick feeling grows stronger. Each contact feels like fingers digging at Lavi, tendrils wriggling inside. When he is close enough to see, he sees that her eyes do not look at the battle at all.

She sends bindings at Kanda, who dodges all but the last, which circle his ankles and send him toppling. Then the Crow sends another chain out of her hand, but this time Lavi swings his hammer into it and sends it whipping through several lines of trees.

The Crow falters, and Lavi turns the earth at her feet into quicksand that swallows her to her shoulders. He knows it would just take a bolt of lightning, the electricity channeled straight to the heart, to kill her.

But the tug is still there, as much as he is repulsed. The pulse of her Innocence has calmed, gone dormant.

"Lavi, do it!" Kanda shouts from behind him, struggling to kick off the pesky bindings that, while no longer active, have wrapped up and around him thoroughly.

But the Crow's head has gone completely limp on her neck, and her mouth hangs open. Lavi knows she is no longer a threat. And can he kill an Innocence-bearer and not reap any repercussions?

He hears another strangled shout. Tyki writhes in a full-body binding, teeth bared and eyes crazed, his movements very clearly weakening.

"Lavi!" Kanda shouts, like he knows what Lavi will do and is furious at him for it.

Lavi extends his hammer and clobbers the Crow who has bound Tyki. The Crow slams into a tree and crumples, but Lavi had already known he wouldn't defend himself – he'd gone as motionless as the woman had.

Tyki sags, but catches himself on a tree trunk and slices off the bindings. The fourth and final Crow already lies dead a few paces away, heart in the dirt beside him.

Tyki goes over to this one and bends down, frowning as though puzzled. After a moment of contemplation, he slices off the Innocence arm. When he does so, it dissolves completely, leaving behind a cube of Innocence.

"Disgusting," he says. He tosses it briskly at Lavi, who catches it out of pure reflex. "Don't look so worried, Bookman," he says with a tinge of annoyance. He shakes his hand as though something unpleasant sticks to it. "I'd ask you to let me destroy them all right now, but I know you wouldn't like that request very much. Ah."

Lavi follows his gaze. At the base of the tree, the crumpled Crow's arm flares up, energy reaching out like it is trying to break free. The sick feeling comes back tenfold, washing over Lavi and filling his mouth with salt. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees light burst out of the hole in the ground, and Kanda scrambling away from the Crow there.

The tendrils of energy pull taught, and then snap back and engulf the Crows, who start to scream. The light flares so brightly Lavi has to shut his eye. But he hears the screams go on and on, and then turn gurgled, and then fall suddenly silent. When he looks, there is an empty hole in the ground, and no sign of anyone ever having been at the foot of the tree.

No sign, except for a cube of unsynchronized Innocence in each place.

"How unpleasant, this Innocence of yours," Tyki says, still staring at the same tree. Lavi is sure he had been able to watch the entire thing.

Tyki approaches the first Crow he killed, lying in the grass with a bloody hole in his chest. He prods the Crow with his foot. Then there is a flash of Mugen and his hand is pinned against the tree behind him, Kanda's sword right through his palm.

"You bastard," Tyki snarls, but Kanda turns his blade sharply and says, "Give me one reason not to kill you right this second."

"One:" Tyki says. Even though Kanda's Innocence makes him wince, he manages to wrestle back his twisted smile. "You wouldn't be able to." And then he yanks his hand so that Mugen slices right through it. "Two: If you tried, I might not be able to keep stifling my urge to kill _you_."

"Yuu," Lavi says, but Kanda flashes his blade to Tyki's throat.

"What are you doing? Why are you following us?"

"Like I said, I've been given a task. Your Allen" – he smirks at this, as though he is telling a particularly funny joke – "told me he passed a message to you, quite a while ago. What is it he said? 'Kanda, I'll need your help later'? Well, now that it's later, what do you say?"

Kanda scoffs, lifting his blade higher, forcing Tyki to raise his head and bare more of his throat. Though, of course, Tyki could retreat, or fight back.

"I have no reason to trust you. You killing Crows proves nothing. And that message proves nothing."

"I left your heart intact, did I not? You've seen very few Akuma, have you not?"

"But why?" Lavi says, stepping up beside Kanda and sticking the point of his hammer right up to Tyki's throat as well. "You're a Noah, and we have just what we need to kill you." Sparks jump off of his hammer, and Tyki grits hit teeth but otherwise doesn't move. "We _have_ been killing you. So why should we do any different to you specifically?"

"Because, Bookman. I _am_ different. You've thought about it, I'm sure."

Lavi would glance at Kanda if he wasn't wary of removing his eye from Tyki, but Kanda has already acted on impulse – slashing his sword, except Tyki has already slipped backward right through the tree.

"Your Allen said you would be difficult," Tyki says, head phasing through the trunk. "But that, in the end, you wouldn't have conflicting alliances tying you anywhere else. He also said that he would still allow you to kill him if he became the Fourteenth."

"Yuu," Lavi says.

Kanda _tsk_ s. But Lavi knows he is trying to think fast, and sees the opportunity of finding Allen again and carrying out past promises. And there is no overlooking the fact that Tyki freed him from the Crow's chain.

Finally, Kanda says, "If you give me one more reason to kill you than the many I already have, I will not hesitate to tear you limb from limb just like I did your brother."

"Lovely," Tyki says in a monotone, stepping fully out of the tree. "So is that a 'yes' to your Allen's request?"

"We _will_ kill you," Lavi warns.

"Good," Tyki says, as though Lavi had just given him the 'yes' he wanted. "Because I don't think I'll be allowed to control the Akuma much longer, and I'll need your help with our most special guests."

* * *

For four more nights, Lavi dreams horrible dreams, and when he wakes up Kanda is already holding his hand, jaw clenched and eyes glaring into the distance. Lavi doesn't know if he's angry at the dreams, at Tyki, at the whole situation. At him. In four days they have hardly spoken.

Lavi feels no affection for Tyki either, but the magnitude of Kanda's antagonism toward the Noah is so great that four days feel to Lavi like a century of Kanda's murderous storm clouds. He thinks, tiredly, that if Tyki wanted to kill them he'd have tried it several times over, and surely Kanda realizes this too and is just grousing on principle.

It is hardly better when Tyki goes off on his own for stretches of time. "To calm the part of me that wishes to kill you," he says matter-of-factly, when Lavi asks. Kanda is just as sullen, just as silent.

The tug has returned, so much stronger than it used to be. Tyki leads them to two more Innocence, but even after these are found, the tug grows stronger. It feels like something infected inside of him, feels like longing for a missing piece or like restlessness or like he needs to be in five places at once. He's forgetting what it feels like to breathe easily, because each breath is so labored, air trying to fit into his twisted up insides.

When he activates his Innocence, it is better for a moment, then worse. When he deactivates, it is better for a moment, then worse. So he no longer deactivates.

"Wanna cut it off, Yuu," he says the fifth night, when he's just woken up and the stigmata on his arm pulse with pain. It always seems worse at night. "God, am I Falling?"

Kanda's fingers squeeze his, and as much as Lavi tries to find this sensation he can hardly feel it.

"If I'm not, you're not," Kanda says.

And then a Level Three attacks, but Lavi's Innocence has already thrown up a shield of pure energy around the two of them, and Tyki melts out of the darkness and dispatches the Akuma without a word.

And they set off again, Lavi trying to hold himself together, hot and cold and shaky. In the back of his mind there is a thought, like someone else whispering it to him, like gentle hands trying to comfort him: _Just let go. Stop fighting it._

* * *

He does just that, when they face Fiidora. He sees the tongue, the eyes, feels a beat of horror and the feeling of the stone seat beneath him, and that is all it takes for the whisper to overtake him. There is a split second when he feels himself being pushed out of his head that the panic solidifies in his throat, but then his ears rush and his eyesight fades.

He hears Fiidora yell "Traitor!" but by then he feels so weightless, such a pleasant change from the tugging every which way, that he offers no more resistance.

He comes back to himself with his head hanging over Kanda's shoulder, and Kanda's hands holding his thighs. He bounces a bit, in time to Kanda's steps.

"I'll kill you," Kanda is saying, and Lavi registers Tyki a few paces ahead, walking calmly. "I'll kill you. If you don't stop this, I'll kill you."

"I can't, and you won't," Tyki says with a lazy wave of his hand, not turning around.

Lavi lifts his head. He feels Kanda's attention snap to him.

"Are you okay?" Kanda says, fingers tightening against his thighs.

Lavi brings his hands up to clutch at Kanda's shoulders. "I think so," he says, because he actually does feel more stable than he has in days, though so much more weary as well. "What the hell happened?"

Very, very stiffly, Kanda says, "You killed the Noah."

"Oh," Lavi says in a small voice. "Well, that's a –"

"It wasn't you."

At the edge of town, Kanda lets Lavi off his back, but stands exceptionally close as they continue onwards, ready for any stumble. Lavi feels kind of like he has a watchdog, or a bodyguard. Everything below his knees feels not quite solid, but he manages to keep his back straight and his feet moving, aware of the eyes on them, and mostly on his arm.

Tyki has his top hat pulled low over his forehead, and when they reach the inn Kanda hisses at him, "Look like a human and get us a room."

"Yuu, why are we stopping?"

Kanda's eyes flash to him. "Have you seen yourself?"

Lavi brings a hand to his face as though he will find a deformity there, but Kanda shakes his head.

"You look like you're going to pass out again. You need real rest."

Tyki gets them a room, and Kanda practically hauls Lavi up the stairs, grip unrelenting on his arm. He slams the door as soon as he and Lavi are inside, and then pushes Lavi up against it.

"I can just walk through it," Tyki says from the other side, but he sounds resigned and like he won't bother.

Kanda ignores him. He looks angrily at Lavi – still and always angry. But he looks helpless, also. "What's happening to you?"

Except Lavi can tell, by the look in his eyes, that he understands now too.

("Why didn't you let me or Lenalee help Yuu fight Sheril?" Lavi asked Tyki a couple of days ago. The two of them sat a fair distance from each other in the grass. Kanda had gone off to refill their canteens, but only after Lavi had assured him, "Yuu, I'm not going to die in the time it takes you to get some damn water from the stream."

Kanda had stalked off very irately, and Tyki had scoffed under his breath, and then Lavi had asked him the question.

"He had the greatest chance of killing my brother. It was very thought out, trust me. The girl might have gotten in the way, and your Allen is quite fond of her. And _you_." He grinned. "You have to be kept safe for as long as possible." His smile dropped. "You understand, don't you?" he said, with a motion of his chin toward Lavi's arm.

Lavi had been thinking, and had come to the same conclusion, though he didn't like it one bit.

"I didn't ask for this," he said, which made Tyki scoff again.

"Do you think your God cares about that?"

And Lavi had thought, _No_. The Innocence have an agenda all of their own, and they will use humans to achieve this end. There is no such thing as having a say, not when you are a weapon.

Bookmen aren't supposed to have hearts, and yet here he is. The worst part is, there is no special reason for it to be him. He doesn't think he has any reign over any of it.

 _Let go. Just give in._ )

"Lavi!"

He is being shaken roughly. His head hits the door, more faraway sound than sensation.

"You're doing it again. Lavi!"

His vision swims back into view, and he realizes it isn't anger in Kanda's eyes. It's fear.

"I think the end's coming," Lavi says. The rotten feeling inside of him is returning, tugging at him, hooks tearing him slowly, laboriously apart.

Kanda clutches his arms as though he thinks he can prevent the end from coming, time from flowing, if he just holds onto Lavi tight enough.

"I didn't want this," Lavi says. He takes Kanda's face in his hands. "How fucking hilarious though, huh? A Bookman shouldn't have a heart and all that? But we don't know for sure. It's just speculation."

("And what about you?" Lavi asked. "What the hell are you doing helping us?"

"I'm not helping you. If anything, you're helping me. Actually, you're helping your Allen, or the Fourteenth, however you'd like to think of them."

"What's got you turning on the Earl, though? Some kind of family fallout?"

Tyki chuckled. "You have no idea."

"So the Fourteenth is trying to take over his seat."

"No, actually. He's trying to be selfless. He and your Allen's old master have this theory, to stop history from repeating itself all over again." He pointed at Lavi's arm. "That and the Earl have to destroy each other, so that it all goes away."

"You mean this and the Fourteenth."

Tyki quirked an eyebrow. "You picked up more than you're letting on, when you were in that chair, didn't you?"

Lavi had thought, _I_ _f my Innocence is part of my blood, how can it be destroyed without destroying me?_ )

He drops his Innocence arm, so that he touches Kanda just with the hand that can feel his warmth. He brushes Kanda's bangs out of his eyes, tucks some behind his ear. "You know, Yuu, you do help me. A lot."

"It's just going to force you out again. When it takes over, where will you go?"

Kanda's fingers dig deeper into Lavi's arms, and his nose flares. An agonized expression like the one Lavi saw in the library, long ago.

Poor Kanda, he thinks. Losing two people in such a short time. Heartbreak on top of heartbreak.

He doesn't want to have this conversation right now, so instead he says, "You know how I told you my real name? The thing is, I kinda don't even have one. The lady at the orphanage gave that one to me."

The story goes, as Lavi understands it, that he was born, but not very much wanted. This must be the explanation, because when he ended up at the orphanage in China at the age of one and a half, his parents were the ones said to have left him there, no name provided. He doesn't know if he was even born with one.

A couple years later, the sorceress cast a spell on his eye, but Kanda already knows that story. A few years after that, Bookman showed up and took him away, and made him take on yet another name and another personality, and then so on and so forth.

"So really," Lavi says, and to his surprise his voice chokes up, "I don't have a name at the base of it all. Not really sure who I am."

He realizes he must be afraid of losing himself, or else he wouldn't be unloading his history onto Kanda, as though Kanda will write it for him after he is gone. If Kanda makes it through. Kanda must make it through.

"Whatever you do, Yuu, don't die."

Kanda breaks eye contact, and Lavi feels a shot of alarm.

"Promise me, Yuu." He pushes his palm into Kanda's cheek, turns Kanda's face but Kanda's eyes continue to avoid him. "Promise me."

"I can't promise that."

" _Yuu."_

And now Kanda's hands take his face, thumbs on his cheeks, palms on his neck. Kanda brings them forehead to forehead, nose to nose.

"I'd like to."

"I'm sorry about all of this," Lavi says. It hurts in his chest, but this pain is his own doing. If there was no Innocence, and no Dark Matter, no war of biblical proportions, he might have everything. Everything in the man pressed close to him, everything in spiny, spitting Kanda Yuu. He almost does. They almost did.

"Why are you apologizing?" Kanda says.

"If I'd let you go alone you'd have had an easier time. But I came along with you and now you're stuck with a Noah, and me falling apart, and I know you hate it. I'm sorry."

"You're such an idiot," Kanda says. His fingers curl against Lavi's neck, catching in Lavi's hair. "You're such a damn idiot."

Lavi thinks he's right. He feels so stupid. There are much larger things to be concerned about – the fate of the world, for example. But he's just a tiny human with a weak heart, and so he is most concerned with Kanda. He lets his other hand fall to his side as well, but he keeps his forehead against Kanda's.

"You help me a lot, Yuu. You've helped me so much."

"Then let me keep helping you."

Lavi cannot make any promises, so he tips his chin up. Against Kanda's lips, he says, "It's starting to hurt again."

Kanda makes him lie down, and then sits beside him, and tries to wrestle a promise out of him anyway.

"You too. Don't die." When Lavi does respond and doesn't open his eye, he shakes Lavi's arm. "Okay? Promise me."

Lavi hardly knows why he starts smiling. It feels wry, but somewhere deep inside he wants to laugh. "I'll do my best."

"Lavi!"

"I like when you say my name."

"Is it already addling your brain?" Kanda says, words going sharp. Lavi is making it difficult for him.

"If you promise me, Yuu, then I'll promise you. 'Kay?" He lifts his hand so they can shake on it.

But Kanda offers no promise, so Lavi lets his hand fall.

"Yuu, do you feel brave?"

The bed creaks, and Kanda kisses him. It is a surprise, hard and insistent without expecting any of the same in return. He bites Lavi's lip, and it reminds Lavi of so long ago, beneath a bridge at the edge of nothing.

"Do you?"

Lavi opens his eye, and he sees another sight he remembers well. Kanda looking down at him, blocking the view of the ceiling and its old beams. Eyes that want him, and mostly want him to stay.

"Maybe a little bit more, now."

* * *

It's ending, Lavi thinks, waking up hardly any hours later. It feels like his stomach is in a freefall. His stigmata feel like they are festering. He dreamt of Headquarters burning to the ground.

"Lavi. Lavi!"

"I'm here, Yuu. I'm here." He pushes Kanda's hands away, pushes himself up. His vision goes sideways for a moment, but he shuts his eye tight and when he reopens it, the ceiling and floor are in the right places again.

 _Just give in. Just let go._

He has sweat clean through his clothes. He aches – his arm, his joints, his veins, the roots of his teeth.

Kanda is cursing to himself, pushing Lavi's hair off of his forehead. Lavi just bats him away some more, hardly noticing the hurt look he causes, quickly masked by indignation.

The door bursts open, and energy shoots out of Lavi's hand and pushes Tyki straight back out, pinning him to the wall on the other side of the hallway.

"Dammit, Bookman! Let go of me!"

"Sorry," Lavi says, still trying to get used to being awake. Things feel immediate and sharp, and drugged and slow at the same time. The energy from his Innocence dissipates, though, and Tyki half-runs, half-stumbles into the room. Once he's inside he straightens up.

"It's ending," he says. He glances at the satchel of Innocence. Lavi feels it too. Restlessness.

"How long?" Kanda says.

Tyki says, "A little while longer." He tips his head back like he is listening for something.

"It's happening right now," Lavi whispers. And then, louder, "It's started already. It's happening at Headquarters."

Tyki doesn't respond, eyes on the ceiling.

"We can't just sit around and do nothing!" Kanda yells, shooting to his feet and grabbing Mugen. But there is nothing to cut down except for Tyki, and Kanda doesn't.

Tyki says, "They'll be here soon. It's part of the plan."

And so he stands, head back just slightly, and appears to be lost to himself. An hour goes by, and then the first tears roll down his face. He does not react to them, though – doesn't look like he is in any grief, or like he realizes them at all.

And then Lavi doubles over. Pang. Tug. Fraying. Snap. Snap snap snap. He clutches at his chest, fingers digging in over his heart.

"God," he says. He squeezes his eye shut, snarls deep in his throat. "God! God, it _hurts_."

Kanda clutches his shoulder, but he hardly feels it.

Tyki says, "Time to get up."

* * *

It is a battle that rushes up to them, no fanfare, which seems fitting.

Akuma dot the skyline. Lavi can feel Innocence on the way as well.

They stream out of Allen's Ark to their side. But it isn't Allen anymore. Hardly. A disfigured Crown Clown attached to a Noah's body. Lavi sees Lenalee, and Marie, and Miranda, and Cross, and then he cannot look anymore because there are Akuma to parry. Everyone is separated. Everyone simply fights.

A power much larger than himself rolls through him, guiding his movements, acting before he thinks commands.

The night sky goes red and violet and orange as the Earl and the Fourteenth battle, the rebounds of their attacks spreading who knows how far, Lavi just knows that they are nowhere in sight. And then the number of Akuma multiply exponentially, peppering the multicolored sky.

He blinks, and they are upon him. Even with lightning and wind and fire he can hardly keep up. This is unlike anything he has ever faced; any second his skin will erupt in stars, and he really will be dead before he's played his part.

He needs his other eye. He blasts a hoard of Akuma away, and rips off his eyepatch. The world opens up before him, three dimensions and an infinity of details.

The things he sees: Kanda, beautiful in the throes of destruction, raw Innocence around him in a near-blinding glow, his double-illusion swords like wings; Lenalee who he almost can't see, except he can feel where she is, flitting constantly, sound too slow to keep up with her; Cross, or rather, Cross' grin, this is what he sees most of the sorcerer, exhilaration.

These are the comrades he is nearest to, but there are also: explosions, Dark Matter, Akuma bullets, fire, claws, teeth, armor, flying grit, his own hair in his eyes, the flash of Kanda's sword, the whip of Lenalee's braid, the glint of jewels on Cross' fingers, his own hammer wreathed in green light, the lightning dancing across the earth's surface, the pebbles that fly up when he skids away from a shower of bullets, the widening pupils of the Level Four that tears after him, the feathers of its wings fluttering in its airstream, every individual tooth in its mouth, its flattened nose, the star on its cheek, his death, his death, his death.

No.

His Innocence swallows it whole, disintegrates it before it can make a sound.

Backlit clouds in the sky, a dark shape against them, Kanda and light and four, five, six other shapes that enclose him. The pull, it yearns and aches and screams. The terror is all his own. And still behind the stifled light that is Kanda, there is the moon slowly peeking over the swell of the clouds, the craters on its surface looking like faint grayish bruises.

And then there are twelve Akuma all around him, and in a split second he sees everything about them and several dozen ways he might die, and in the next fraction of a second they are moving at him and the ways he might die increase.

He fights them, and sees a hundred things at once every second and feels his mind shutting down, overwhelmed by the input. He feels the thing larger than himself pulsing through him, feels the Innocence taking control. It burns, angry and desperate and most of all, mournful. He sinks into it, consciousness put to rest, no longer needed. His Innocence and his eyes are enough for now.

Awareness returns for a few seconds with a wrenching feeling that cuts right through him, like the deepest part of himself has been gouged out, deeper than the marrow in his bones. Someone died. Right here. Someone died. The Innocence screams, it tears at him like fingernails down his face, like fire in his stomach and needles in every inch of his flesh. His vision swims, and something hits him from behind, dull in comparison with the agony of loss but still enough to pin him to the ground. His head slams down so hard his eyesight cuts out completely.

Awareness returns and there is Tyki above him, but facing away, and there are butterflies and Tyki says without looking at him, "They're after you now, but we've come too far to have you giving out on us just yet."

Past him is a swarm of forty-three Akuma hurtling for them, and then his brain begins sorting through the details and the Innocence consumes him once more.

When he comes back the next time, his right eye is unseeing, and his face bleeds freely.

The sky is dark as pitch. Where are his comrades, where are their lights? His body feels so far away, or he feels so far away from his body. Floating, swaying, vision hazy.

He hears a cough, and turns around.

Tyki falls to the ground, and an Akuma is upon him, tearing him apart.

"God damn you, Neah! You said – Agh! Did you exorcise her or did you just kill her?!" And then he simply howls.

When Tyki's limbs go still, the Fourteenth stands and faces Lavi. Where did he come from? He looks unwell, missing an arm, and green light oozes out of the gaping hole there.

"He killed Allen," the Fourteenth says, with a wheeze like a laugh and a smile like a sickle moon. His hair is everywhere and matted in gore. "Just like he promised. The swordsman. Thanks to him, Allen is almost completely gone."

The plan failed. The Fourteenth has lost his mind. His eyes are on Lavi's arm.

"You have to let me destroy it," he says, and Lavi's Innocence reacts with angry sparks.

He has a vision of Dark Matter eating up his arm, and then going straight through his heart, and then dissolving him completely.

 _One more fight. You're almost done._

The Innocence pulses through him, more sentient than he is. As its tool, he lets himself be wielded one last time.

* * *

At the end of all things there is stillness, and a weight that bypasses the skin and presses at his insides – lungs, because it is hard to breathe; heart, because everything hurts in a way that is beyond the physical pain he feels all over.

He realizes he is alive. He exists, which means the world exists, which means humanity does as well. But being alive at the end of all things, even this small victory, is tragic, because it has involved so much loss.

The sky is the pale hue of first light, and the clouds are a nearly colorless gray. He cannot move, feels weaker than a blade of grass, than the moth that alights on his cheek. He thinks that he has never understood the word 'broken' more than he does right now, when there is hardly any part of him that is not shattered, or torn, or pulverized.

The Innocence did so much for him. It must have been keeping him standing until the very end, despite his injuries. Despite the gash he feels splitting his right cheek, that goes right through his eye, which is now as useless as he always pretended it was. His Innocence has probably been healing him all along, like it did with the hole in Allen's heart so long ago.

He wonders how true this is for everyone else – if, once it was part of Kanda's bloodstream, it aided his regeneration. Maybe it is the only reason Kanda's worn out healing core was able to kick start when it seemed to have given up after that fight with Sheril.

Kanda…

Lavi's right arm is gone, and aside from the pain of brokenness, he feels nothing else. He searches for the connection all the same, but his Innocence has truly left him. Which means, so has everyone else's.

Allen's Ark still stands. He sees it, not even that far away, rising right out of the Earth. This once used to be a town, didn't it? He and Yuu, and Tyki too, were inside an inn.

It hurts so much. The sun is rising, the right side of his face feels tight. Everything aches at different frequencies, so that together he might as well be composed of nothing but one persistent throb.

His ears pop, and there is sound. He hadn't even realized its absence until he has it again. He hears nothing more than his own breathing, not even a bird. And then he hears soft little grunts of exertion, very near but he cannot move his head to see. It doesn't matter, because after several minutes – or maybe hours, he isn't sure how lucid he remains – Lenalee's face looms into view.

Her hair falls over his forehead, his nose, his mouth. She is cut up, and bruised, and one eye is swollen shut. The other is squinted in pain.

But there is a hint of her smile when she says, "You're alive," and she sounds like she will cry from relief.

"Was feelin'…too brave to die," Lavi manages.

He thinks Lenalee means to laugh, but it just sounds like an exhausted release of breath. Her forehead touches his. It hurts but is also the most comforting thing he can imagine. Not being alone at the very end.

"Yuu?" he asks her.

She gives a minute shake of her head that he feels rather than sees, because he's gone ahead and closed his eye.

"Don't know."

He wants to cry, but if she can't, there is no way his wreck of a body could manage it either.

* * *

He recovers, but so excruciatingly slowly.

They were not the only two alive. Komui and his men came for the survivors. Lavi woke up in a hospital room, drugged up and dozy, and the head nurse fussed and fussed. And then he started the process of healing once again, no Innocence to help this time around.

Since he cannot do much, can hardly move on his own, much less eat or bathe or use the damn bathroom, he asks Komui to talk to him. It is a comfort that he still has his Bookman training, and it springs in to fill the void survival has left in him.

He learns that Central took over the European Headquarters, the most successful at having gathered Innocence. The Vatican tried to use Lenalee, the only Crystal type on hand, to force synchronizations. They took some of her blood, infused with Innocence, and injected it into Crows, and then forced them to synchronize with retrieved shards of Innocence, but to minimal success. The Innocence in their veins was not compatible with them, nor were the Innocence they were equipped with. They had a limited shelf life, and Fell before long.

By then, Komui's forces had already retrieved Lenalee and severed all ties. And then Allen and Cross and Road appeared and the ambush took place. The two other Noah who had arrived, presumably to destroy the Innocence Central was hoarding, were killed by the Fourteenth.

When Lenalee recovers enough to wheel herself around in a wheelchair, she visits Lavi and tells him more. She says that Allen – the Fourteenth (she still stumbles on the name) – killed Road after the other two Noah.

Lavi tries to piece the rest together. Tyki had assumed the Fourteenth would exorcise Road rather than kill her outright, and must have assumed the same for himself. That was part of the deal they struck, which means the Fourteenth had already gone back on his word during HQ's ambush. Somehow, somewhere along the line, he'd started slipping through the cracks, and nobody had noticed. Or so Lavi thinks, but constant fatigue makes thinking difficult, so who knows what he will come up with once he has recovered.

"Did we win?" he asks her early one morning. He's not exactly sure who he means by 'we'.

Lenalee's crutches stand against the wall, and she sits on the edge of his bed. He can sit up now, and stab the meat and vegetables at the bottom of his bowl with his fork and feed himself all on his own.

"I don't know," she says. "I don't know how to tell." Her voice is much quieter than he remembers it being, like it has lost its force, its vivacity. Though perhaps this is simply a side effect of living out of hospital rooms.

"You know," she says a few minutes later, and there is a lilt in her voice that he has missed. Contemplative, a hint of brightness, of wonder. "During that fight, I felt stronger than ever."

She, too, knows about Lavi's Innocence. So does Komui. Though Komui supposed it all along. The damn Bookman's doing. Former Bookman, that is.

Lavi has to wonder why, if the Heart was so powerful, it lay dormant in him for so long. Did it need time to strengthen? Did he need to synchronize to the extent that he did, allow it into his bloodstream, so that it could take root and then take over?

Could it have taken anyone? Or was there an actual reason it ended up with him?

But the most important question of all has nothing to do with any of that.

Is he going to be Bookman, or will he keep being Lavi?

(Or did the Heart choose him because he is the one who can try to piece together this most recent history, and record the tale for future generations? No, God never cared for that.)

* * *

When he can get himself into a wheelchair - specially made by the science division, with levers he can step on to get himself going, and a handle at the end of the armrest to turn with - the first place he goes is straight down the hall to Kanda's room.

"He's grumpy," Lenalee had said with a shrug, when Lavi had asked about him.

And then, the next time she visited, she said, "He says 'Hi' back."

But the things he wanted to be able to say to Kanda were too personal to use Lenalee as a messenger for, so he has waited.

He wheels into Kanda's room, and closes the door, and forgets every single thing.

Kanda is propped up in bed, many pillows beneath his head and shoulders. The curtains over the window beside his bed have been drawn back, so the sunlight washes over him. He blinks at Lavi as though stunned to see him. His hair is loose, and the clothes his is dressed in are loose too, white and sterile. He looks unblemished, but the fact that he is still bedridden while Lavi is not means that there is more beneath the surface.

Lavi wheels himself over, wheelchair squeaky in the silence. And then he works himself laboriously out of his chair – quite a feat, with one arm – and onto the edge of Kanda's bed. And then, very carefully so that he doesn't jostle Kanda, he scoots himself up toward the headboard.

"God damn," he says, sweating and thoroughly exhausted. But he grins anyway. "Hey, Yuu."

The first thing Kanda says, reaching up to touch Lavi's chest, is, "It doesn't hurt anymore?"

Lavi has never cried so hard in his life.

* * *

The regenerative core still works, but in fits and bursts, with lulls in between where Kanda has to deal with healing at a normal pace for once. Something that, according to him, is "the most annoying fucking waste of time I've ever experienced in my life."

"Jeez, Yuu, melodramatic much?" Lavi said, clumsily braiding sections of Kanda's hair. He's getting better with his fingers, but some things will forever be harder.

But nobody in the world, past or present, is as stubborn as Kanda Yuu. Even with his regenerative core stalling, Kanda is determined to get back on his feet. Lavi spends most of his time with him, and they talk less than ever before, but he feels Kanda filling the void in a way that the Bookman routine could not.

The tattoo sits all the way to the tips of Kanda's fingers, and disappears into the waistband of his loose cotton pants. "It's like someone's still painting you," Lavi said, trailing a finger down Kanda's arm. Kanda rolled his eyes at such an obnoxiously romanticized idea.

And a little while later, he got back on his feet.

The dead have been cremated long ago, but the empty caskets still sit in rows in the main hall. Lavi has avoided the scene for as long as possible, and so has Kanda, but once Kanda is up they go together, without discussing it, to the top of the staircase overlooking the room.

Kanda is in the crutches Lavi no longer has a need for. He has a hand on Lavi's shoulder. The main hall is silent, and empty save for the reminders of so many people. The war has really come to an end.

"Well, Yuu, I guess we did it," Lavi says humorlessly.

The hand on his shoulder just rests there. He trusts that Kanda knows he needs it.

"I guess so," Kanda says back, just as humorlessly.

"Another chapter closed."

He wonders if he should feel more grief, looking at all those caskets. All he feels is that void-like sensation.

"Who are you now?" Kanda asks.

Lavi shrugs. "I'm just me."

He sees Kanda look at him, and he feels the weight of that gaze. "You still seem like Lavi to me."

And Lavi laughs, and it steals too loud down the staircase, but he doesn't care because he's just been given the answer he's wanted for so long. That Kanda already gave him, one night so long ago before their stories separated for a time. But that Lavi needed to hear again, now that he doesn't have a war to fight anymore, and instead has to figure out what he does have to do.

"Then I am Lavi. Not number forty-nine Lavi. Just Lavi."

"You know," Kanda says, and his gaze burns into the side of Lavi's face. "Lavi…I love him."

And Lavi smiles, and looks at him, and finds it so fitting that Kanda looks as serious as ever. "Then you love me."

Kanda nods, his hand warm and promising on Lavi's shoulder. He says, "Yes."

* * *

Headquarters is being patched up, for now, because it is a home for so many people who are still alive. It is a confusing time, and banding together is the easiest way to find a tether. The Order is becoming something transitionary. A giant, disjointed family trying to figure out how to live in the wake of tragedy, trying to figure out who will stay and who will leave, and what will be done next.

The stigmata on Lavi's skin haven't left, but they've scarred and faded. Kanda's as well.

"Does this mean we're more or less holy?" Lavi had joked with his lips at the crook of Kanda's elbow, and Kanda had said, "Who cares."

And then Kanda had pushed him back into the pillows, and slipped a thumb beneath the string of his eyepatch. The question had been clear as day on his face.

"Yuu…" Lavi had said, neither refusing nor permitting.

Kanda took the eyepatch off, and then pressed a kiss to the scar on Lavi's cheekbone. "Open it," he said.

The eye is white, like swirled milk, Lavi knows from glances in the mirror. He opened his eye and his blind spot did not vanish. Kanda kissed his eyebrow, and the faintest of sensations against Lavi's eyelashes made him shut his eye again, and Kanda kissed his eyelid.

He often finds himself touching his scar when his mind is elsewhere, like when he is eating or reading, or even when he is falling asleep at night. He rubs his fingers over the puckered skin, usually just his index and middle finger. He's not sure if it's because there is something soothing in the motion, or if he's just not used to the scar yet.

"Come away with me."

Lavi's fingers still against his cheek, and he looks up from the pages of his book.

Kanda's room has changed very little. The window is still cracked. Lavi's books are still on his corner table. Mugen rests against the wall beside his bed – a different Mugen, and this is a change. Kanda requested a sword to practice with once he was well enough to work on regaining his muscles. "A good one," he said, "not one of the brittle pieces of junk in the armory."

He named it Mugen because it felt right. "Or you're just completely uncreative," Lavi suggested, and Kanda had glared.

Now, Kanda sits on the floor with his legs crossed, but his head is bowed and he is swathed in tension.

"Yuu, you weren't meditating?"

"I couldn't concentrate."

"That's a first," Lavi says. He sets the books aside and stands up.

He crosses to Kanda, who is thinner than he used to be, but so is Lavi. They train together, and afterwards sometimes compare muscle mass like pubescent teenagers, and after that often end up in bed together, which is a workout of its very own.

"Let's go somewhere," Kanda says.

Lavi kneels in front of him. "Go where?" he says quietly.

"Anywhere," Kanda says. "I don't care. Away from this place."

Lavi waits, but Kanda still won't look. His bangs have grown so long that he is able to tie them up with the rest of his hair. Kissing Kanda's forehead is Lavi's new favorite way of making him blush.

"I know you hated it here…but it did end up meaning something to you, didn't it? Something redeeming."

"It did," Kanda admits grudgingly. He shakes his head. "But I can't be here anymore. I'm done." He looks suddenly at Lavi. "I can't be here anymore, Lavi."

And now Lavi can see the caginess. Of course Kanda wants to finally be away from everything and everyone that played a role in all his many tortures, now that he's finally played his own role and has no Innocence to tie him back.

"What about Lenalee?" Lavi asks.

"She has her brother."

This is true. The both of them will stay here for the rest of their family that wants to stay as well.

"What are you packing?"

"Nothing. Mugen and you. Nothing else is important."

Kanda's eyes don't guard anything. They are full of fire, and noise, and brashness. Lavi loves him.

He leans in, mouth to Kanda's ear, and says it.

Kanda grabs him, holds him tightly. "Come away with me," he says into Lavi's hair.

Lavi says, "Yes."


End file.
